Despite having the highest Colorectal Cancer (CRC) incidence and mortality across all major racial/ethnic groups, Black men consistently have poor CRC screening rates.. Despite CRC screening’s life-saving potential, African American men have had the lowest 5-year relative survival for more than 40 years. We also don’t get the simple screenings for other chronic diseases.
Recent studies, at the Department of Public Health, School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, University of California Merced, looked for the reasons African American men delay in getting even simple screenings for hypertension and diabetes. They concluded that: (1) African-American men’s delays in preventive health screening uptake are associated with reasons other than the lack of health insurance or access to care, and (2) Medical mistrust alone may not be the sole or most critical deterrent of healthcare utilization and system disengagement among African-American men.
Why is This Important: It seems that, in recent studies of the hesitancy in getting vaccines and screening, studies may have more to do with experiences Black Americans have with the current system than the Tuskegee experiments.
Abstract/Full Text (subscription or payment may be required)