Unfair Diagnosis: Socioeconomic Gap Drives Cancer Outcomes

January 23, 2019

(Scientific American) – While the United States has experienced a 27 percent decline in death rates overall over the last 25 years, cancer outcomes continue to be greatly influenced by socioeconomic status and race. Specifically, poor people and people of color have significantly higher cancer mortality rates than average. A newly released study in the January 2019 issue of the American Cancer Society’s CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians shows a decline in the mortality gap between blacks and whites, moving from 33 percent in 1993 to 15 percent in 2016. But the findings note that blacks have the highest cancer mortality rate when compared to other racial and ethnic groups.