And the disparity between black and white women is narrowing, CDC says
FRIDAY, Oct. 14, 2016 (HealthDay News) — The racial gap for breast cancer mortality is closing, particularly among younger women, according to research published in the Oct. 14 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Breast cancer mortality rates are down overall for both white and black women, though there’s still a disparity between the races. Between 2010 and 2014, mortality rates dropped faster among white women than among black women, 1.9 percent a year versus 1.5 percent, according to the researchers. However, among women under 50, the mortality rate was the same for both races, the researchers found.
“We hope that the signal we are seeing in younger women we will see in older women as time progresses,” lead author Lisa Richardson, M.D., director of the division of cancer prevention and control at the CDC, told HealthDay. “Historically, black women have had higher mortality rates and they still do overall, but for women under 50 the declines are the same, and that’s something we have not seen previously.”
The biggest difference between the races in the drop in breast cancer mortality was among women ages 60 to 69. For these women, rates dropped 2 percent per year among white women and 1 percent among black women, Richardson said. The declines in mortality are largely due to more education about breast cancer, cancer screening, and better treatment, she added.
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