April is Minority Cancer Awareness Month: Schedule your screenings now
Every cancer has a day, week or month to drum up awareness and provide educational opportunities to help people understand their risk. October is the time for all things pink for breast cancer awareness, for example.
April is Minority Cancer Awareness Month, a full 30 days dedicated to reminding people of color that they have a higher risk of cancer in general. “Can cer education, and people’s risk of cancer, always has to be a topic of conversation, it always has to be relevant,” says Nikia Clark Robinson, a Community Rela tions Coordinator and Program Coordinator with Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Office of Community Outreach and Engagement. “Our mortal ity rates are still higher than any other ethnic or racial group. There’s still distrust in healthcare settings that could prevent people from getting regular screenings. There’s still not enough talk between people and their doctors. There’s still screening guidelines that aren’t being adhered to. People in the Black and Hispanic/Latinx communi ties need to have as much sup port as possible.”
Black Americans have the highest mortality rate of any racial and ethnic group in the country across all types of cancer and for all cancers combined. Black men are twice as likely to die from prostate cancer and have a lower five-year survival rate for most cancers than other men. Black women have the same risk level for developing breast cancer but are 40% more likely to die from the disease.
“We know that Black women stop their treatment four to six weeks earlier than white women. Our most vulnerable women are having the worst outcomes and the highest mortality rates and aren’t even finishing treatment. Delaying by a month or a month and a half might not seem like a big deal, but with cancer treat ment, it’s significant,” Nikia says. “You need to finish your treat ment. If you peel back the layers to look at the data in real life, we want to know why that is — are they not being supported? We also know that Black or Hispanic/Latinx men are more likely to get lung cancer. If you’re Black, you’re prone to have worse out come from lung cancer if it’s not caught in the early stages. There’s also a stigma around lung cancer that we need to overcome.”
Roswell Park also has adopted and expanded a patient navigator program in which people work with patients and prospective patients to make sure all appointments are attended and follow-ups are completed. “We can do all the outreach, getting the awareness out there, but we need our navigators and volun teers. Patient navigators are from traditionally underserved com munities, historically minority communities, and they’re bilingual – that’s extremely impor tant,” Nikia says. Navigators look like people in the community they’re serving, an acknowledgment of the fact that people will relate and respond more to people who look like them and share, or appear to share, a common background and way of viewing the world. Navigators help to make sure people get the screenings and care they need and pro vide a compassionate but steady reminder that cancer screenings and doctor appointments are critically important to protecting a person’s health, Nikia says.
As a reminder, here is the general advice for when people should start to have regular can cer screenings if they are of aver age risk. People at higher risk of developing certain cancers, including breast and colorectal cancer, may need to begin these screenings earlier:
Breast: Mammography for women age 40 to 70 (frequency depends on risk factors)
Cervical: Pelvic exam, Pap test and routine HPV testing for women age 21 to 65
Colorectal: Colonoscopy for men and women age 45 and older
Lung: Low-dose CT scan for men and women age 50 and older with more than 20 pack-years of smoking history and have smoked in last 15 years
Prostate: Digital rectal exam, counseling about PSA early detection and PSA testing (if desired) for men age 45 and older
Skin: Full-body skin check for patients with any suspicious lesion
For more information on can cer screening guidelines, go to www.roswellpark.org/screening prevention.