Whites less apt to die from cancer than other racial groups

Carol Forsloff - Research has found that whites are less apt to die from cancer than other racial groups.  That is especially true in comparing whites and African Americans as reflected in a 2010 research study on the subject.

The difference in the death rates is due to a number of factors, according to the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, that show how blacks are diagnosed and treated must be changed.  The results of the study were published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, Vol. 210, No. 7, July 2010

“Black cancer patients don’t fare as well as whites. Their cancers are diagnosed at a later stage, the care they receive is often not as good – or they get no care at all. Black patients may trust their doctor less, they may be unable to pay and the hospitals that serve more black patients tend to have fewer resources,” says study author Arden Morris, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of surgery at the U-M Medical School and chief of general surgery at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

“This is a complex problem and it won’t be easy to solve,” she adds.

As the United States reels from the riots caused by racial disparities in the treatment of African Americans and whites when it comes to how African Americans fare in the criminal justice system by comparison with whites, the issues of health may not be printed widely, which can be a factor also in people being unaware of the problem itself.

In Hawaii people with Native Hawaiian ancestry, and other Polynesian groups, have problems with obesity, a factor found as one of the risks for cancer.  A news release highlighted the problem in 2008, something that has continued to be mentioned in other publications, yet not underlined as widely as necessary, experts tell us.

Cancer is one of those diseases experts remind us needs public education as part of the prevention, and whereas it has a number of risk factors, and complications in diagnosis and treatment, the more the public understands the nature of it and that education reaches people who may be poor, and in the groups most at risk, the more attention can be given the problem and solutions found.