Essay On Racial Disparities

Words: 539
Pages: 3

Disparities in breast cancer outcomes among African-American women and racial minorities are significantly worse compared to Caucasian women. Breast cancer occurs more often in white women but often kills a greater proportion of women of color. Studies have shown that part of the mortality gap can be attributed to differences in access to care, health insurance and other socio-economic factors. Many studies have been conducted to improve provision of healthcare to eradicate disparities. A recently published study suggest that the scientific research process may be flawed and might contribute to racial disparities. This study states that a lot of medical research used as a basis for medical guidelines fails to include or consider the impact on minority populations. …show more content…
The study shows that 31% of black women, 35% of Hispanic women, and 33% of Asian women were diagnosed with breast cancer prior to reaching the recommended age to begin screening. These findings suggest waiting to begin breast cancer screening at age 50 may not effective in detecting the disease while it is still in early stages. This also suggests that US task force guidelines for screening breast cancer might be contributing to racial disparities in health outcomes. Since US task force guidelines are mostly derived from research conducted on largely white populations, the produced guideline for breast cancer screening was ultimately harmful for minority patients because the scientific basis was done without regards to racial differences. Furthermore, this guideline plays a large factor whether health insurances cover mammography services. If mammography is not covered by health insurances, this could hinder women to seek services because they are not old enough to begin mammography screening under the task force guidelines (Johnson,