According to the California Breast Cancer Research Program, in 1980 breast cancer mortality rates were equal for both African American and Caucasian women. By 1990, however, African American women had a 16 percent higher mortality rate than white women, and by 2004 this difference had increased to 36 percent.(Um, gee, wasn't that the year that Ronald Reagan was elected US president? Do you think that maybe the country has changed since then? And maybe those changes weren't for the better?)
Post author Brenda Salgado observes that while research into such topics as differences in access to health care and genetics are important, there are also deeper causes of these inequities.
As we seek to identify genes that may be predictive of disease, we may unknowingly turn our attention from talking about other issues like income, racism, access to healthy foods and neighborhood pollution. Like breast cancer mortality, these issues are not distributed equitably in our society, and there is already clear evidence that these factors affect multiple health outcomes.
Earlier this year, the Center for American Progress issued a report called “Geneticizing Disease: Implications for Racial Health Disparities.” The authors tell the cautionary tale of BiDil, the first race-specific medication targeted at African Americans, and the ethical, research and funding controversies surrounding its approval. They also make the case that placing all our emphasis on medicating disease once it has arisen will come at the cost of preventing disease from occurring in the first place.
We need to make sure our policymakers think more broadly than genetics research and health “disparities.” Resources also must focus on addressing the social injustices that lead to health inequities and on improving the social conditions of everyone in society.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment