Recent research has showed marked disparity in the sort of treatment that black women and white women with invasive breast cancer receive, with black women significantly less likely to receive the recommended treatment for their disease.
Part of the reason for this can be socio economic factors, insurance coverage etc, however this does not fully explain the fact that black women are –
- 9 percent less likely to get the recommended form of surgery,
- 10 percent less likely to get the recommended hormonal therapy,
- And 13 percent less likely to get the recommended chemotherapy.
However, even when the differences in economic and social backgrounds were accounted for, the differences persisted, and black women of the same socio economic background were still less likely to receive recommended treatment than their Caucasian counterparts.
This has surprised researchers making it clear that the connection between race and cancer care has to be identified, if the lack of balance is to be redressed.
For the purposes of the study, records of more than 660,000 women treated at hospitals across the country from 1998 through 2005 were examined. Though the differences may appear modest, they actually translate to thousands of women and the actual reason needs to be identified in order to make health insurance more widely available.
