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Member Research & Reports

Member Research & Reports

Johns Hopkins and Maryland Find Awareness of Angelina Jolie’s Preventive Mastectomy Not Linked to Greater Knowledge of Breast Cancer Risk

A new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Maryland School of Public Health found that while three out of four Americans were aware that Angelina Jolie had undergone a preventive double mastectomy, awareness of her story was not associated with an increased understanding of breast cancer risk. The study, published today in Genetics in Medicine, surveyed more than 2,500 adults nationwide three weeks after Jolie revealed in a New York Times op-ed that she had undergone the surgery because she carried a rare genetic mutation of the BRCA1 gene and had a family history of cancer.