Sharyn Kolieb - Australian Jewish News
Shani Paluch-Shimon’s pioneering research in the fight against breast cancer has recently been rewarded with a prestigious grant from the US-based Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
As the director of breast oncology at Hadassah University Hospital, Professor Paluch-Shimon’s research into healthcare disparities in Jerusalem seeks to improve breast cancer outcomes for ultra-Orthodox women and Arab/Palestinian women. It is the first of its kind.
Originally from Melbourne, when Paluch-Shimon moved to Jerusalem she found the healthcare differences striking compared to central Israel. Jerusalem is Israel’s largest city but it is also its poorest, and ultra-Orthodox women and Arab women in Jerusalem have lower survival rates for breast cancer than those in the rest of the country.
Hadassah has two campuses — one in West Jerusalem and one in the East — and sees ultra-Orthodox, Arab, and secular patients, with medical professionals trained to care for the best outcomes for their culturally diverse patients.
“It’s a model of hope for how things can be, and I think that’s always been part of the ethos of Hadassah, which is why I feel I can do the research there successfully,” she said.
Paluch-Shimon studied medicine at Monash University and moved to Israel in 2002 where she completed her oncology training at the Sheba Medical Centre. During her medical studies, sadly her mother passed away from breast cancer when she was 31.
“I have a picture of her in my room, and it reminds me of what it is like for the person sitting on the other side of the table,” she shared.
Discussing advances in treatment, Paluch-Shimon said that breast screenings are likely to change over the next decade based on more personalised based on individual risk. “With AI, we are now developing intelligence technologies that can be fine tuned for individuals, we’re not approaching breast cancer with a ‘one fit for all’ approach,” she explained.
“A lot of cancer screenings will be done through social media in the future,” she said, adding there are “huge challenges” ahead but they can be tackled together.
She noted a key issue is that breast cancer outcomes are not good for the one in 40 people in the Ashkenazi Jewish community who are predisposed to hereditary breast cancer due to an inherited predisposition, including BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations.
In Israel there is free BRCA genetic testing for all Jewish women over 25 with Ashkenazi ancestry in the public health system.
In Australia, BRCA testing is free in NSW for women and men of Jewish ancestry through the Wolper Jewish Hospital, and DNA collection kits are sent in the mail in a partnership with the Centre for Jewish Genetics and Centre for Australian Ashkenazi Jews outside of NSW.
Sharing what it has been like to be a doctor in Israel post October 7, 2023, Paluch-Shimon said that while the rest of the country stopped, her work as a doctor continued, treating people who had cancer including breast cancer patients suffering trauma from the October 7 massacre who had been displaced from the south.
She said that while she received support from international colleagues, “small pockets of academic boycotts” presented a challenge.
A Breast Cancer in Young Women International Conference to be held in Dubai in October 2024 was cancelled after calls for Paluch-Shimon to step down as chair because she is Israeli. The European society responsible for the conference made an executive decision to cancel the conference rather than ask Paluch-Shimon to step down.
She remarked, “It was important for me not to cancel my participation in overseas conferences where women in my field are… it was important to me to wear my badge … I don’t care if there was backlash, when you say never again and then say ‘never again’ happened again.”