Degenerative Cancer Research Paper

Among minorities such as Asians, Hispanics, Indians, Native Americans, and Middle Easterners, the African American race has been affected tremendously by the health disparities in the United States. Currently, African Americans have significantly higher mortality rates from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV, unintentional injuries, pregnancy, sudden infant death syndrome, and homicide than do whites Americans (Fiscella & Williams, 2004). While African Americans may lead in these categories, other minorities are not far behind in experiencing health disparities.

The incidence of cancer is higher in Black Americans, both men and women, than non-Hispanic Whites. Men are more likely to have lung, pancreatic and stomach cancer. They are more likely to die from prostate cancer. Black African American women are 36% more likely to die from breast cancer.

Declining cancer incidence and mortality rates in the United States have continued through the first decade of the twenty-first century. However, Black Americans continue to have the higher cancer mortality rates and shorter survival times. This review discusses and compares only breast and prostate cancer mortality rates and mortality trends for Blacks and Whites. The complex relationship between socioeconomic status and race and its contribution to racial cancer disparities is discussed.

In the Article Socioeconomic Disparities in Breast Cancer Treatment among Older Women States, “Approximately 200,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer and 40,500 die from the disease…White women have a higher of this disease than black women. However, black women have a higher mortality than white women (White, et al. 7)”. Breast Cancer is a health disparity to black women because they’re most likely to die from it than white women due to tumor differences. Many woman not only black women die from cancer because they chose not to go through chemotherapy, but According to the article Socioeconomic Disparities in Breast Cancer Treatment Among Older Women says, “Black women with node positive and node negative tumors were 25% and 17% less likely to receive chemotherapy than white women. Black people are more likely to die not only because they don’t receive chemotherapy but because of patient and tumor characteristic, and after adjusting for socioeconomic (White, et al.1)”. Breast Cancer is a huge health disparity to black women because most of them can’t survive with this disease than white

Health disparities among African-Americans is a continuing problem that has been seen over many years. African-Americans have higher poverty rates, have lower rates of insurance coverage, and are more likely to be covered by Medicaid, than the White population (Copeland, 2005). This lack of insurance has led many of these individuals, to not seek treatment for illness, due to problem accessing health care (Kennedy, 2013). This leaves African-Americans with little to no treatment, which causes an increase of medical care that will be needed further on in their life or a sooner than expected death, caused by illness (Copeland, 2005).

African Americans are twice as likely to die of an illness such as cancer and heart disease as well as, less likely to have health access compared to any other race. African Americans are yet subject to racial discrimination and stereotypes in the health care, that leads them without the correct health screenings and treatments. The root of these racial disparities connects with the intersectionality of race, class, gender and education.

While there is no clear definition of what health disparities are, Healthy People 2020 defines them as “differences that occur by gender, race or ethnicity, education or income, disability, geographic location, or sexual orientation” (Adler, 2008). Health disparities are not determined by solely biological differences, but rather more attributed to the environment surrounding a person. The public health industry is so concerned about racial health disparities that stem from the social environment

Low income neighborhoods are still witnessing a rising gap in healthcare coverage. For example, patients with diabetes are more likely to undergo limb amputation than those in higher income areas (Pearl, 2015). Also, research has shown the Caucasians women have and overall incidence of breast cancer that is higher than that of African American women (Williams, Mohammed, Leavell, & Collins, 2010). On the contrary there is a higher death rate of breast cancer in African American women than in Caucasians women.

Medical advance and improved technology providing all Americans more healthier and long lives more than ever before .In contrast racial and ethnic minorities experience significant number of health disparities .The major factors of these minority group health disparities are income, education, and work status, as well as poor housing,

Race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic position are social determinants that lead to disparities in healthcare. Despite declining death rates, African Americans have consistently had higher mortality rates than Whites. For example, breast cancer is more prevalent in whites however the incidence of mortality from breast cancer is higher in black women. Black women are also likely to have more advanced cancer at the time of diagnosis than their White peers. Williams (2002) proposes that racial categories are more alike than different in terms of biological characteristics and genetics. Furthermore, they do not capture patterns of genetic variation. Thus, it is not biologically reasonable for genetic differences alone to play a major role

The National Cancer Institute provides great examples of cancer health disparities and the burdens each ethnic group face. Factors such as education, living conditions, exposure to environmental toxins, workplace, and access to healthcare can influence the survival rate and mortality rate of those diagnosed with cancer. More so, medically underserved populations face the most burdens resulting in late diagnosed or no treatment at

There are several race traits and risk factors from African-American such as Heart Disease, Cancer, Stroke, Diabetes, and Pneumonia/Influenza. Also they have those risk factors due to cultural difference diet and exercise such as hypertension, coronary artery disease, stroke, end stage renal disease, dementia, diabetes, and certain cancers. Especially, diabetes has more frequency reason of death among Black elders than in other ethnic people except American Indians (Health and Health Care of African American , n.d). In addition, according to the Health and Health Care of African American (n.d.), the death rate for all cancers is 30% higher for African Americans than for Whites, e (Health and Health Care of African American, n.d).

In the article “In Cancer Trials, Minorities Face Extra Hurdles,” Al Drago illustrates how minorities are institutionally discriminated against. Drago gives several reasons why cancer trials are disproportionately white, how researchers are aware of this inequality and trying to correct the problem. One and perhaps the biggest

My father was put on chemo after chemo, radiation after radiation, pill after pill they all had different reactions to his body causing different things to happen for different reasons. Some would make him sick, some would make him feel like he was being electrocuted if he got cold, some made him happy, or even weak. No matter what reaction happened to his body, it didn’t get rid of the cancer if anything it made it spread. Soon the cancer was in many different organs of his

Leukemia most common treatments are: Chemotherapy, Radiation therapy, and Bone marrow transplantation, and then there is also Biological therapy. In chemotherapy, patients take one or more anticancer drugs by mouth or, intravenously through IV therapy. In some cases, doctors need to inject the drugs directly into the fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord. Chemo can cause side effects, like losing your hair, nausea, fatigue, or easy bruising, depending on the drug. The side effects usually go away progressively between treatments or after treatments stop.