The wait gave Latonya Drumwright a premonition. It was supposed to be a quick visit, something she could get done during her lunch hour on a beautiful March day when the daffodils seemed brighter than sunshine. Now she sat under the glare of a fluorescent light with the uneasy inkling that this mammogram would not be just another routine checkup.
“They put me in this little room,” Drumwright said. “They told me they found something that didn’t look right.”
She took the rest of the day off from work to tell her husband, whose mother had died from breast cancer, that she, too, might have the disease.
Breast cancer is deadlier for African-American women, who have a survival rate of only 68 percent five years after diagnosis and treatment compared to 83 percent for white women, according to a 2015 study published in JAMA Oncology. The disparity in outcomes is well documented, but the reasons for it aren’t understood.
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