Racial Disparities in Breast Cancer and Genomic Uncertainty: A QuantCrit Mini-Review

Abstract

African American women are 39-44% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women. This stable racial disparity in mortality rates has persisted since the 1980s and is unlikely to improve unless specific factors leading to disparities are discovered. Racial health disparities should be understood in the context of stable racialized social structures that determine differential access to information. The purpose of this study is to consider how recent quantitative studies using HINTS data might benefit from a critical race agenda to capture the nuances of African American women’s information behaviors, genetic testing awareness, and testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations.

Keywords

• health information behavior
• quantitative analysis
• critical race theory
• disparities