A new study has found that African-American women experience the longest diagnostic, treatment and clinical delay of breast cancer treatment. This helps explain why African-American women have higher death rates from breast cancer, compared to white women – even though white women have the highest incidence of breast cancer.

Authors of the study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Teachers College Associate Professor Dr. Sherri Sheinfeld Gorin, and Dr. Suzanne J. Smith, both of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian, are available for comment.

Using data from more than 49,000 women enrolled in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results-Medicare database from Jan. 1, 1992 – Dec. 31, 1999, results found that African-American women experience average delays of:

- 29 days for diagnosis

- 20 days for treatment

Overall, African-American race was found to be a strong and consistent predictor of all forms of delay, after controlling for age, presence of comorbidities, marital status, size of the city of residence, cancer stage, tumor characteristics, HMO status during the study, cancer detection method and socioeconomic status.

The researchers believe that the delays may be caused by cultural variations in approaches to cancer detection and follow-up for abnormal findings, including attitudes or beliefs toward the causes of cancer and methods of detection and treatment. They also believe that patients’ psychosocial factors, such as fear and anxiety, a sense of fatalism, perceived risk, misunderstanding, body image, the competing demands of caring for others, and social norms, may also delay diagnostic evaluation and treatment.

Teachers College is the largest graduate school of education in the nation. Teachers College is affiliated with Columbia University, but it is legally and financially independent. The editors of U.S. News and World Report have ranked Teachers College as one of the leading graduate schools of education in the country.