JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Some of the country’s top cancer physicians and researchers visited Jacksonville to find ways to include more minorities in cancer clinical trials and address disparities in care.
Dianne Townsend is a breast cancer survivor. She’s been cancer-free for almost 18 years.
In learning about her diagnosis, she found there was much more she didn’t know.
“I learned that we didn’t survive,” Townsend said. “The treatments are out there. But the access to the treatments, and the quality of the treatments I learned early on might not have been the same.”
Townsend said learning her diagnosis was “numbing.”
“There’s a possibility that I might not survive the disease and that a lot of it had to do with the fact that there were disparities,” Townsend said.
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The American Cancer Society said African Americans have the highest death rate and shortest survival of any racial/ethnic group for most cancers.
Part of these realities highlight how diverse groups don’t participate in research or clinical trials.
Mayo Clinic is looking to advance inclusive research. They’ve done multiple studies — all in a commitment to address health disparities.
Dr. Folakemi Odedina, enterprise deputy director for Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center, said clinical trials are the golden standard for interventions, medications and devices created to be responsive to different people.
But it’s been discouraged for some people, following cases like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, or Henrietta Lacks.
“Even in the present, we sometimes experience that discrimination, we sometimes experience racism in healthcare,” Odedina said. “If I did not participate, and I as a Black woman, I was never represented in that study, I’m the guinea pig after the study is done. Because you have what is called post-marketing surveillance. Then they’re going to say, ‘Oh, the drug is now approved. If anything is wrong with you while you’re taking the drug, let us know.’ Right? So, we have to make the informed choice.”
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They work with different community organizations like the American Legion to address cancer in veterans.
Townsend said she’s thankful to be here and wants to remind women there is some hope.
“So the purpose of course is to help where we are now but you got to think about the future. And your daughters and your family and friends that you, perhaps may be diagnosed in the future,” Townsend said. “We need to take that information into the community where it’s going to matter so that we’re not losing our black women to this disease at the rate that we are.”