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Jeremy Craig, 404-413-1357
University Relations
When Demetrice Jordan talks about her craft, it’s very clear that she has a passion for helping to combat not only health disparities, but also to find the risk factors leading to cancer and other diseases.
However, at Georgia State University, she’s not a biology or chemistry major. In fact, she’s taken a different track in research – just like how she’s taken a different path to becoming a researcher at the forefront of public health.
Jordan is a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in health and medical geography. Using geographic information systems, Jordan is combining data, such as air quality, the location of grocery stores and healthcare providers, along with the demographic data of the community, to analyze the social and physical factors involved in the risk of cancer.
“I remember when I was growing up my grandfather would say to me, never follow where others dwell – create your own path, and leave a trail. That stuck with me throughout my life,” Jordan said. “I’m different, but I’m leaving a path for those coming behind me so that they won’t have to try so hard to fit a circle into a square.”
Her path toward higher education has not been a traditional one. A native of Memphis, Tenn., she went to an inner city high school with a high dropout rate. Jordan said everything about her environment said success was an accident. With the guidance of programs like the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Project Achieve, Jordan began to believe that success could be the norm.
Her inspiration to pursue cancer research came when her beloved aunt, Alberta Jackson, lost her battle with cancer in 1996.
“I was 21, and I remember there was so much about the disease, the treatment protocols, and the outcomes that we as a family just didn’t know or understand entirely,” Jordan said. “She was a wonderful aunt, and to know her was to love her. Therefore, the impact of that loss stayed with me and prompted my deep interest in cancer prevention – which is the best cure for cancer.”
Jordan, the first person in her family to graduate from college, initially went to Mississippi Valley State University in Itta Bena, Miss., but after an intense period of school, she took time off before coming to Atlanta. Jordan graduated of Georgia Perimeter College also earned her bachelor’s from GSU in May 2010.
She faced many obstacles – including having heart surgery at the age of 23. But she pushed herself hard in her academic career with the support of her mother and late grandmother.
“My grandmother and I used to have talks about me finishing school, and she would say “if anyone can do it, you can," Jordan said. “Hearing her believe in me even when I didn’t believe in myself gave me the inspiration I needed to continue.”
Now as a single mom of her son Ashton and in graduate school, she’s at the top of her game – both in Atlanta and nationally. Jordan is one of only 14 students who were selected as a fellow for the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institutes’ Introduction to Cancer Research Careers fellowship, to be held at the NIH research complex in Bethesda, Md., this summer.
Even before her pending work with NIH, she had a summer fellowship at the prestigious M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, in the Cancer Prevention Research Training Program with the Department of Health Disparities Research at the Center for Research on Minority Health in Houston. The center is one of the top-rated cancer research institutions in the nation.
Being a geography major put her in a unique position among her peers in the NIH fellowship program, who were mostly in biology/biomedical or similar fields.
“I was the lone geographer among them,” Jordan said, “and many of the students were from programs at Harvard, [University of California] Berkeley and Johns Hopkins.”
At the NIH, she will work under Mary Ward, an award-winning researcher who is participating in a multicenter investigation of the relationship of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and its relationship to specific industrial toxins.
Back home in Atlanta, Jordan works with the visualization wall, a huge display of computer screens which allows researchers to better visualize data. She is also an intern at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention working on a minority AIDS project.
After graduation, Jordan would like to earn a doctorate in public health focusing on epidemiology, and become a Kellogg Health Scholar – another program that would put her at the forefront of health. She has three pieces of advice for those students coming after her.
“Don’t fear the words ‘competitively awarded.’ Put forth your best application and always ask how you can make your application stronger,” Jordan said. “Have a teachable spirit, and mentors that you trust. And finally, be known as someone others like to work with, as collaborations are a key part of research.”
Published March 21, 2011