The Race Problem in Breast Cancer Screening

Here’s a curious fact: Black American women are 37 percent more likely to die from breast cancer than white women, according to a 2015 report by the American Cancer Society, yet they receive early-stage diagnoses much less frequently. 

Why might that be?

Biology’s role isn’t clear. The breast cancer death-rate in the U.S. is on the decline—from 1989 to 2012, it by 36 percent, likely because, researchers suspect, treatments have improved and detection happens earlier. But that progress hasn’t benefitted everyone equally: By 2012, black women’s death-rate was 42 percent higher than white women’s. Take the case of triple negative breast cancer, a virulent type that only responds to standard chemotherapy instead of less toxic medications that target specific receptors driving the cancer, such as . It’s “regularly reported to be three times more common. Yet the cause of this is “unclear”—it could be a combination of genetic and environmental factors.