Oppong Sheds Light on Racial Disparities in Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Mortality

Welcome to OncLive On Air^®! I’m your host today, Ashling Wahner.

OncLive On Air^® is a podcast from OncLive^®, which provides oncology professionals with the resources and information they need to provide the best patient care. In both digital and print formats, OncLive^® covers every angle of oncology practice, from new technology to treatment advances to important regulatory decisions.

In today’s episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Bridget A. Oppong, MD, a surgical oncologist and deputy director of the Center for Cancer Health Equity at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center–James, as well as a professor in the Division of Surgical Oncology at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. Dr Oppong joined us to talk about racial disparities in breast cancer.

Although breast cancer mortality rates have steadily declined over the past few decades, Black women with breast cancer are still 40% more likely to die from their disease than White women, according to the 2022 American Cancer Society update on female breast cancer statistics in the United States. Additionally, of all racial and ethnic groups, Black women have the lowest 5-year relative survival rate for all molecular subtypes and stages of disease other than stage I.

In our exclusive interview, Dr Oppong discussed factors that contribute to the ongoing disparity in breast cancer deaths among Black women vs White women, the importance of increased access to high-quality screening, and the need for policymakers and health care systems to leverage more inclusive research efforts to close the gaps in breast cancer diagnosis and care.

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