Can We Close the Mortality Gap?

Having Cancer Is Dangerous Enough—But Being Black With Cancer Is Even Deadlier

We don’t know exactly why African-Americans suffer disproportionately from cancer, with higher incidence, morbidity, and mortality rates than other groups. But we do know that many factors—social, environmental, behavioral, and genetic—play a role. At an event sponsored by the California HealthCare Foundation at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, a panel of experts discussed clues in the existing research and presented ideas and strategies for African-American communities to prevent and treat cancer more effectively.

Mignonne Guy, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic Arizona, began the conversation by admitting that she didn’t have the …

Cancer Doesn’t Have to Be This Deadly For African-Americans

We Don’t Know All the Causes of Health Disparities Between Blacks and Whites. But We Can Still Remedy Some Obvious Problems.

Doctors and health experts have long known that members of minority groups in the United States tend to have poorer health outcomes than white Americans. I noticed it myself while …

The Equity Cancer

For All the Progress in Treating the Disease, Why Are So Many African-Americans Still Dying From It?

Talk to those who treat and study cancer, and you hear about progress in research and treatment. But there is a stubborn exception to the good news: the persistently higher …

The Year I Didn’t Die

Reckoning With Cancer—and Survival—at 21

Was it a mistake? An information packet for the Revlon Run/Walk for Women, a 5K race to increase awareness of women’s cancers, had arrived in the mail. Affixed to my …

Dr. Me

Cancer Patients Want a Say, But Do We Have To Be the Doctor, Too?

Shortly before my 39th birthday, when I was taking a shower, I felt a lump about the size and shape of a pea in my right breast. I felt a …