Here’s a revelation for Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Women of color are much more likely to die of breast cancer than white women due to poor medical care, especially black and Indigenous women.
NBC News writes, “Black women are much more likely to get the wrong treatment for breast cancer, be diagnosed later and have bigger tumors than white women, researchers reported Tuesday.”
The news comes via a recent study led by Lu Chen of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, based in Seattle, Washington. Chen said, “We found that there is a consistent pattern of late diagnosis and not receiving recommended treatment for some racial and ethnic groups across all breast cancer subtypes.”
The study comparing and contrasting breast cancer treatment throughout the U.S. is the largest of its kind to date, and the results are unsettling to say the least. It confirms that black women, Indigenous women, and women of color overall, are much more likely to develop far more aggressive types of breast cancer than white women. It also blatantly shows that the quality of care is not nearly the same – a lethal combination.
Chen’s team analyzed data from over 100,000 women across the country currently listed on a cancer registry at the National Cancer Institute and wrote of their results recently in the medical journal “Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention,” “Women in several racial/ethnic groups are more likely to be diagnosed with [a] more advanced stage breast cancer.” The team writes, “African-American and American Indian/Alaska Native women in particular had the highest risk of being diagnosed with stage IV triple-negative breast cancer.”
NBC News writes of the study:
“Black women had a 40 percent to 70 percent higher risk of having stage IV cancer — which has spread through the body and which can no longer be eradicated — than whites.
“Native American women were nearly four times as likely to have stage IV triple-negative cancer, a particularly hard-to-treat type.”
NBC also reports:
“It’s long been known that black women are far more likely to die of their breast cancer than white women. Studies have offered all sorts of clues — there may be genetic differences, there may be disparities in getting medical care, black women may get inferior treatment, and black women may simply avoid doctors more.
A 2013 study found black women were often sicker to start with, suffering other conditions besides breast cancer.”
There are any number of reasons for women of color to put off going to see a doctor until it is too late, from economics to a history of eugenics against women of color in the U.S. Lack of money, fear, and to a certain extent, paranoia, make sense, especially considering the country remains quite racist and in denial of that racism. While that racism remains by and large on the country, itself, the decision to put off going to the doctor rests with women, understandably. That said and aside, however, where the issue takes a darker, more malicious, racist contemporary turn on par with our national historical track record is when women of color actually do go to their doctors and receive sub-par, even negligent treatment. Why they receive such treatment, again, goes back to money and racism.
According to the study, African-American and Hispanic women are more likely to receive improper treatment for their cancer than white women by a sad tune of 30 to 40 percent. That issue is complicated by the fact that there are numerous subtypes of cancer and each requires their own treatment plans. However, curiously, that seems to be less of a problem where white women are involved. Again, that truth lies largely with money often being less of a factor, and racism not proving an additional obstacle to overcome in the process.
To put this into perspective, the National Cancer Institute states that for every 100,000 women of each ethnicity battling breast cancer, 34 black women succumb to the cancer; whereas, 25 white women do. Interestingly, however, is the number for Hispanic and Indigenous women. Despite often developing more aggressive, harder to treat types of breast cancer, and a higher rate of receiving dubious care from their doctors, only 16 out of 100,000 Hispanic and Indigenous women end up dying of breast cancer.
Perhaps that is another subject worthy of study on its own.
Take less than a minute to watch the video below to see when you should schedule a mammogram, yourself.
Featured image by Rashod Taylor, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
