Black women have the highest breast cancer mortality rate in the United States but Boston researchers have developed a new tool to help close that gap and save more lives. “My sister died of breast cancer two years ago. My mother had breast cancer. Her sister had it,” said Dr. Julie Palmer, of Boston University’s Slone Epidemiology Center.Palmer has spent more than two decades focusing on the health of Black women and studied why that part of the population is hit so hard by breast cancer.”Barriers to the best treatment, also higher incident of the tumor type that’s more aggressive, but another barrier is the delayed diagnosis,” she said. Diagnosis is where her research team was focused. They developed a breast cancer prediction tool focused on risk factors specific to Black women.”Young, Black women are dying too often from breast cancer,” she said. “I especially wanted something that could be used for women who otherwise wouldn’t be screened because nobody is at that age until someone realizes that person is at really high risk.”For example, Palmer’s tool includes a question about having a family member with prostate cancer — since that disease is a lot more common among Black men and may indicate a higher risk for breast cancer among related women. The prediction tool asks women to answer a series of questions and responds with a risk factor for developing breast cancer in the next five years. Palmer said the easy process is designed to help, but not replace, a professional diagnosis. “It wouldn’t be valuable for someone to look at this and do this calculation herself,” she said. “We really believe in shared decision making and this we hope will make the women themselves have a part of that decision-making.”