Health Equity: Through The Cancer Lens

Posted by on June 8, 2009

The American Cancer Society invites you to attend its 2009 Conference

Health Equity: Through The Cancer Lens
Empowering communities. Saving lives.

Health Disparities
Health disparities are differences in the incidence, prevalence, mortality, and burden of cancer and related adverse health conditions, beyond what would be expected under equitable circumstances, that exist among specific population groups in the United States.

Health Equity
The state of a population’s health such that access to and receipt of appropriate quality preventive, screening, treatment, palliative, and end of life care, services and information are not determined or influenced by social, economic or political barriers is called health equity. In this conference, we look at health equity through the cancer lens.

Mixed Messages
There is good news: overall cancer incidence and mortality rates have fallen over the past 6 years. There is not so good news: the gap between African Americans and Whites has widened as has the gap between poor, near poor, and wealthy Americans. We know the facts. For example, Hispanic women have twice the mortality rate for cervical cancer than White women; uninsured patients are 1.5 times as likely to die of their colorectal cancer as privately insured patients; poor women will be diagnosed with late stage breast cancer as twice as often as upper income women; and, a recent study showed that a significant number of Korean American women are not familiar with the Pap test. We know barriers such as low social economic status, lack of access to care, geographic isolation, unsafe neighborhoods and treatment bias can lead to poor cancer outcomes. These are just a few of what are called social determinants of health. We also know of programs and policies that have led to improved cancer outcomes and health equity. Now we must act. We know what to do: Intervene, Advocate and Communicate. Our 2009 conference will prepare you to do just that.

Who Should Attend?
If you have the responsibility for developing or implementing programs to improve health outcomes among the underserved, a health professional involved in providing patient care, or a leader responsible for crafting health messaging for the public, patients, providers and/or policy-makers, this conference will directly benefit your work and you will leave with specific next steps to use.

http://thecancerlens.org/