ASPO Abstracts
Reaching a Change-point in Patterns of Race- and Ethnic-Specific Breast Cancer Mortality
Category: Cancer Health Disparities
Conference Year: 2019
Abstract Body:
Purpose. Changing demographic patterns in the US and dissemination of new approaches forearly detection and treatment affect current and projected disease burden. We estimated theproportion of all deaths that was due to breast cancer for specific racial and ethnicity groups by year, ageand birth cohort. Methods. Based on overall and breast cancer mortality rates from publicly availabledatasets (CDC Wonder and the Human Mortality Database), an age-period-cohort model was used to estimate the proportion of deaths due to breast cancer with 95% confidence intervals (CI) for US womenaged 0-119 with birth years 1900-2015 in 4 categories: African American, Asian American, Hispanic(all races), and white. Breast cancer mortality rates were calculated as all-cause mortality ratesmultiplied by the percent of deaths due to breast cancer.Results. All-cause and breast cancer mortality rates were highest for older ages and birthcohorts in all 4 racial and ethnicity groups. The percent of deaths due to breast cancer increased acrossbirth cohorts from 1900 to 1940 then decreased. The percent of deaths due to breast cancer was highestfor women in their 40s and 50s for all birth cohorts. Prior to 2000, the percent of deaths due tobreast cancer was highest for white women. For example, for 50-year-olds in 1990, the percent of deaths dueto breast cancer was 9.3% (CI 8.8-9.8) for African American, 10.0% (CI 3.0-28.7) for Asian American,11.4% (CI 9.9-13.2) for Hispanic, and 12.9% (CI 8.9-12.1) for white women. After 2000, the percentof deaths due to breast cancer was lowest for white women. For 50-year-olds in 2010, the percent of deathsdue to breast cancer was 8.8% (CI 8.1-8.9) for African American, 13.0% (CI 11.3-14.9) for AsianAmerican, 9.7% (CI 8.9-10.5) for Hispanic, and 8.1% (CI 7.6-8.4) for white women.Conclusions. The majority of women of all 4 racial and ethnic groups die from causes otherthan breast cancer. Mortality patterns have recently changed so that long-standing patterns ofrelatively high mortality rates due to breast cancer–as a proportion of all deaths–among white women are now lowerthan for African American, Asian American, and Hispanic women.
Keywords: breast cancer,mortality, disparities