In the News: Race, Barriers to Breast Cancer Care
Reuters featured a study led by Sage Kim, PhD, associate professor of health policy and administration, that found Black women, poor women, and women with deep distrust of the healthcare system were less likely than other groups to report having any barriers to care that might trigger extra help from navigators.
"Healthcare providers are striving to reduce health disparities in the extremely complex U.S. healthcare system, and patient navigators are a recent innovation that has been proven cost effective and useful to help women obtain timely follow-up of abnormal tests and early diagnosis," Kim said. "Healthcare providers need to be more proactive because when women report no barrier, it may not be that they don’t encounter barriers. It may require just asking another question or approaching a different way to get at what many women face in their everyday life."