Opinion: Doing more cancer screening won’t reduce Black-white health disparities
For years, Black Americans have been more likely to die of cancer than white Americans. There is a widespread belief that cancer screening — tests to detect hidden cancer — can reduce this Black-white disparity. While it is important to be attentive to racial disparities in health and health care, the belief in screening is misguided. More cancer screening primarily serves the interests of the health care system, not those of Black Americans.
Questionable rationale
The belief that screening can reduce cancer disparities has emerged in several places. The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), in particular, has injected this belief into its recommendations. The task force’s recent decisions to expand lung cancer screening (by lowering the smoking history criterion from 30 packs-years to 20), colorectal cancer screening (by lowering the age of initiation from 50 to 45), and breast cancer screening (by suspending shared decision-making for women in their 40s in favor of a blanket recommendation) have been motivated, at least in part, by the desire to reduce differences in deaths between Black and white Americans.
