Lack of cancer education, writes Aria White, NNPA Special Correspondent, causes desperate deaths for African-Americans. Because of a lack of education on cancer and cancer-prevention in the African-American community, African-Americans are more likely than any other race or ethnicity to die from cancer, according to medical experts, White reports.

”The problem is that we don’t do enough of what works,” says Sanya Springfield, Ph.D., Director of the Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities, in an interview.

According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), African-American men are 35 percent more likely to die from cancer than White men and African-American women are 18 percent more likely to die from cancer than White women.

Cancer death disparities are top priority at the National Cancer Institute. The NCI’s Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities tries to determine the cause for such health disparities in minorities.

”The difficulty lies in funding, there are plenty of models out there that work, there just aren’t enough of them,” Springfield says.

In addition to websites and special centers to solve this growing problem, the NCI is reaching out to the African-American community through social networks and organizations to spread the word about cancer education.

”African-Americans have a distrust of the healthcare system and that prevents them from getting tested,” Springfield says.

Full story at BlackPressUSA.com

National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), also known as the Black Press of America, is a 65-year-old federation of more than 200 Black community newspapers from across the United States.