While breast cancer screening in rural America remains underutilized, barriers to screening mammography in poor, rural areas are marked by significant racial disparities, according to a new study.
These barriers include poor knowledge about breast cancer and screening, difficulty accessing facilities, and lack of encouragement and funds to get screened.
These factors are particularly striking among Native Americans. The study will be published in the December 1, 2004 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. A free abstract of this study will be available via the CANCER News Room.
Recent advances in breast cancer screening and treatments have led to an important reduction in death rates from breast cancer in American women in recent years.
While early detection has been shown to reduce breast cancer deaths, its impact on mortality rates across the nation depends on large numbers of women getting screened.
Current screening rates approaches 40 percent of eligible women, far less than the national goal of 80 percent. Women in rural America, particularly from minority groups, have even lower utilization rates.
In 1996 an intervention designed to increase screening among low-income women called the Robeson County Outreach Screening and Education (ROSE) Project began in North Carolina. This community-based education project targeted Caucasian, African-American, and Native American women over 40 years old. In this study Electra D. Paskett, Ph.D., Director of Center for Population Health and Health Disparities at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, and her colleagues characterized and compared the baseline knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors about breast cancer screening among 897 women enrolled in this project.