Lung Cancer Disparities Among the Black Community
As many of you may know, lung cancer is a common disease that can affect different people. According to healthline.com, lung cancer is the second most common cancer in the United States, with an estimated 228,820 new cases each year and roughly 135,720 deaths occurring from it. However, while lung cancer can affect people of all different races and ethnicities, certain populations are more susceptible to cancer than others.
Significantly for African Americans, lung cancer is developed at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group in the country. Unfortunately, Black Americans are 37% more likely to develop lung cancer than their white counterparts while also facing lower survival rates. According to the CDC, a substantial proportion of the adult population with insufficient resources is vulnerable to health problems. What’s more, those who recognize that they have lung cancer are, on average, diagnosed at a more severe stage than white patients. Often, by the time black patients get diagnosed, cancer has spread to more organs in the body, making their condition harder to treat. (source)
First, a major leading factor for Black people being more susceptible to lung cancer is education and income inequality. The racial/ethnic disparity in both income and education has been reported to be the lowest for non-Hispanic mixed races and Asian/Pacific Islanders and intermediate for non-Hispanic blacks. The CDC has reported that people who are low income and face socioeconomic circumstances are not only in short of adequate access to healthcare, but also have a greater risk of mortality, morbidity, and higher chances of doing risky behavior, specifically not completing high school. Studies have shown that people who did not complete high school were twice as likely to have disabilities as those who did complete high school, and the proportion of people with disabilities living below the poverty level was over two times that of people without disabilities. (source)
Additionally, since Black Americans often live in low socioeconomic circumstances, they often do not have the same high-quality healthcare as people of other races and ethnicities. Under these conditions, healthcare treatment is not easily affordable to many people of the Black community. Some healthcare treatments that African Americans lack include cancer screening and testing. Without these resources, Black people are 66% far less likely to be put on a path with newer, targeted therapies that lead to longer living lives. (source)
Finally, more Black people than people of any other race live in unhealthy housing units. Although the proportion of unhealthy housing units had decreased from 2007 to 2009, the disparity is still substantial, with Non-Hispanic black people having the highest percentage of householders living in inadequate, unhealthy housing (source). Characteristics of unhealthy housing include lack of structural and safety features and poor indoor air quality. A lack of structural and safety features can cause an increase in the risk of injury and higher blood levels. Poor air quality can lead to cancers, cardiovascular disease, and asthma. Under these conditions, there are huge gaps between the healthiest people and those who are unhealthy.
Although lung cancer disparities are still a huge problem today, solutions are being provided, and there is hope that things can change! For people who face income and education inequality, the US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, has identified effective ways to lower school dropout rates. Additionally, The US Task Force on Community Preventive Services has recommended useful methods to promote healthy and safe spaces for families of low income and methods to stop risk-taking behaviors among adolescents. For people who do not have the best access to healthcare, partnering with community leaders and health organizers can best help people to understand and address the disparities faced by vulnerable communities. For people facing inadequate and unhealthy housing problems, the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Promote Healthy Homes has recommended many useful interventions to prevent home hazards, including improving ventilation, avoiding wastewater systems to dispose of toxic chemicals, and using integrated pest management. With this in mind, there is also so much that YOU can do: increase community awareness, set priorities among disparities to be addressed at the federal, state, tribal, and local levels, advocate many reasons for expending resources, and the list continues. It’s the little things you can do that make a difference.
