Abstract
AbstractAfrican American women are 39-44% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women. This stable racial disparity in mortality rates has persisted since the 1980s and is unlikely to improve unless specific factors leading to disparities are discovered. Racial health disparities should be understood in the context of stable racialized social structures that determine differential access to information. The purpose of this study is to consider how recent quantitative studies using HINTS data might benefit from a critical race agenda to capture the nuances of African American women’s information behaviors, genetic testing awareness, and testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations.
Highlights
In the United States, African American women have the highest death rate from breast cancer despite having lower incidence rates, when compared with white women (Ramirez & Thompson, 2017; Richardson, 2016)
The current mini-review characterizes the quantitative analysis of Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) data described in a sample of 11 studies related to genetic or breast cancer (BRCA) testing (Table 1)
Several (n = 4) of the 11 studies focused on the concept of genetic testing awareness
Summary
In the United States, African American women have the highest death rate from breast cancer despite having lower incidence rates, when compared with white women (Ramirez & Thompson, 2017; Richardson, 2016). African American women diagnosed with breast cancer represent a disparity population as defined by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) due to this poor health outcome (Alvidrez et al, 2019). Most breast cancers are associated with mutations that are acquired throughout one’s lifetime and do not cluster in families (U.S National Library of Medicine, 2019). Some breast cancers are hereditary and related to deleterious mutations in genes that are inherited from a biological parent (Ademuyiwa et al, 2019). Mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes were first discovered in the mid-1990s in families with multiple cases of breast and ovarian cancer (Levy-Lahad et al, 2015). BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations remain a major risk factor for developing breast
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