Abstract IA03: Breast cancer disparities: Progress, challenges, and opportunities

Breast cancer remains the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women in the United States and worldwide. Important disparities in breast cancer incidence and mortality persist. African American, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native women are more commonly diagnosed with aggressive forms of breast cancer (including advanced stage disease and triple-negative breast cancer) and experience lower 5-year survival rates. While survival rates have improved across all races/ethnicities, the disparity gap between different races/ethnicities has held essentially constant. Underlying these disparities are a host of factors related to access to care, socioeconomic status, lifestyle/cultural factors, and systems-level factors. For example, mammography utilization varies considerably by education and insurance status, and African American and Hispanic women are less like to receive guideline-concordant treatment for their breast cancers compared to non-Hispanic whites. Additionally, several risk factors that are more common among African American and Hispanic women (including parity, early age at first pregnancy, and obesity) have been shown to be associated with risk of triple-negative breast cancer, potentially accounting for the greater frequency of this aggressive subtype that they experience. Contributors to breast cancer disparities occur on multiple levels and span the entire breast cancer continuum from prevention to screening to diagnosis/treatment and to survivorship. Continued research on all fronts is necessary to address these persistent disparities. Citation Format: Christopher I. Li. Breast cancer disparities: Progress, challenges, and opportunities [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Tenth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2017 Sep 25-28; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2018;27(7 Suppl):Abstract nr IA03.