Simple economics and differential access to cancer screening and treatment programs may offer a part of the explanation. After Coronary Artery Disease, cancer is the second leading cause of death among African-American women, with breast cancer claiming the most lives. Widespread media coverage has increased awareness of breast cancer in the black community, but another group of cancers that strikes thousands of African-American women each year has received little attention.
Uterine cancer is the most common gynecologic cancer in the United States.
Although African-American women are less likely to develop uterine cancer than white women, once blacks are diagnosed with this disease, they are more likely to die from it than their white counterparts. African-American women were also twice as likely as white women to be diagnosed with advanced stage disease. Since the Pap smear was introduced in 1945, incidence and mortality rates of cervical cancer in the United States have steadily declined. Still, African-American women are more likely to develop cervical cancer and to die of their disease than white women. Since 1974, the survival rate for whites with cervical cancer has improved, while the survival rate for African-Americans has remained the same.