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Mercy Health-Lourdes Hospital recently held a virtual event with congregation members from about 20 predominantly Black churches in the area to discuss why there are such disparities in the quality of healthcare and survival rates for Black people who are diagnosed with cancer.
Multiple doctors who specialize in treating different types of cancer spoke to men and women about cancer screenings and which groups are more at risk of developing certain kinds of cancer.
John Montville, executive director of Mercy Health-Lourdes Hospital’s oncology service line, said the hospital has been working with local African American community leaders to find the best ways to reach community members, encourage people of color to get regular cancer screening, and to have discussions on how healthcare providers can do to help wipe out any negative perceptions of the healthcare industry.
“The goal of this was to educate, was to try to understand what creates these disparities, what we can do as healthcare providers and what the African American community can do to protect themselves from cancer,” Montville said.
According to the American Cancer Society, African Americans have the highest death rate and lowest survival rate for most types of cancers.
For example, Black women are 40% more likely compared to white women to die from breast cancer, Montville said. Prostate cancer death rates for Black men are more than double the rates of every other racial and ethnic group in the United States, according to Mercy Health-Lourdes Hospital.
A variety of factors could help explain these disparities, Montville said, including a patient’s access to cancer screening, a patient’s perception of the healthcare system and how the patient is able to utilize the healthcare system.
Historically, Black people and people of color throughout American history have faced mistreatment in hospitals and in healthcare facilities, which Montville said has impacted the level of trust some members of the African American community have in the American healthcare system.
Montville said involving African American community leaders with facilitating conversations and having frank, open discussions about African American community members’ concerns with healthcare and past incidents of mistreatment in healthcare has helped Mercy Health-Lourdes Hospital staff members improve their healthcare practices.
“It’s not fair ever in a situation to have any group have a better or worse outcome in care simply because of the color of their skin,” Montville said. “That is not right, and we are doing all we can to fix that.”
Another topic Montville addressed was African American representation in clinical trials, where new medications and treatment options are researched and tested, and where data about how patients react to treatment are collected. While African Americans make up about 14% of the U.S. population, Montville said African Americans only make up about 3% of clinical trial patients nationwide.
This impacts how much data and information doctors and researchers have about how certain cancers present in people of color.
For example, Montville said doctors now recommend that African Americans start screening for colorectal cancer at the age of 45, as opposed to the recommended age of 50 for the general population. Doctors have found that colorectal cancer tends to present earlier in life in Black patients, but Montville said this was only discovered because of the patients that sought regular cancer screenings and were involved in clinical trials.
In recent years, colorectal cancer rates in the African American community have been a topic of discussion, especially after Chadwick Boseman, who portrayed characters like Black Panther in Marvel’s “Black Panther” and Jackie Robinson in “42,” died of colorectal cancer in 2020 at the age of 43.
Montville said his death sparked a conversation about how African Americans are more likely to develop colorectal cancer and how African Americans may have to start screening for the cancer at a younger age compared to Caucasian patients or patients of other races and ethnicities.
Mercy Health-Lourdes Hospital is also taking strides to make the hospital feel more like the community it is a part of, Montville said, and taking measures to have the diversity of the staff reflect the community.
“It’s nice to know when you walk down the hallways, the hallways look like your community,” Montville said.
Mercy Health Public Relations Director Nanette Bentley added that the hospital is making efforts to make the staff more representative of the local community. This includes a partnership with Meharry Medical College, a historically Black medical school in Nashville, where some medical students will complete their clinical rotations at Mercy Health-Lourdes Hospital.
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