On Nov. 27, 2007, a new National Cancer Institute (NCI) model for calculating invasive breast cancer risk, called the CARE model, was found to give better estimates of the number of breast cancers that would develop in African American women 50 to 79 years of age than an earlier model which was based primarily on data from white women.

Data from 1,607 African American women with invasive breast cancer and 1,647 African American control subjects in the Women’s Contraceptive and Reproductive Experiences (CARE) Study were used to compute relative and attributable risks that were based on age at menarche, number of affected mother or sisters, and number of previous benign biopsy examinations.

The numbers of cancers predicted by the CARE model agreed well with observed numbers of cancers (i.e., it was well calibrated) in data from the WHI, except that it underestimated risk in African American women with breast biopsy examinations. The CARE model usually gave higher risk estimates for African American women than the Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool and is recommended for counseling African American women regarding their risk of breast cancer.