Radical Differences In Breast Cancer Screening Behaviors And Beliefs In Urban Public School Teachers

Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality in African-American women. Studies have reported that African-American women with breast cancer are more likely to be diagnosed at a later stage of the disease and have a higher mortality rate than white women. Despite this, African-American women are less likely than White women to avail themselves of the benefits of screening mammography. This is most often attributed to lack of education, lack of access, and low socioeconomic status. However, it has been repeatedly shown that when socioeconomic, educational, and logistic barriers are minimized, African-Americans continue to underutilize these screening procedures. In this study, breast cancer screening behaviors and the factors that influence those behaviors were measured by means of a survey questionnaire distributed to members of a defined population of African-American and White women with potentially comparable levels of education, health care access, and socioeconomic status. This report describes the background, objectives, and procedures of this study, and details the work carried out in Year 02, including data collection and analysis. A total of 782 usable surveys were returned from female public school teachers in Philadelphia aged 40 and older. White respondents were more likely than African-Americans to be married or cohabiting, and had significantly higher annual household incomes; they were also more likely to have been adherent to mammography guidelines over the previous five years and to say that they would definitely get a mammogram in the next 24 months. African-Americans, by contrast, were more likely than Whites to have practiced regular breast self-examination. When demographic and health- related factors were controlled for, however, no significant effect of race on mammography adherence or intentions was found.