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Socioeconomic Status and Breast Cancer Disparities

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Toward the Elimination of Cancer Disparities

This quote by the National Research Council, which captures the long history of related research and robust findings regarding the connection between socioeconomic status (SES) and health, cogently illustrates the central theme of this chapter and, indeed, of this book. The traditional socioeconomic indicators of education, income, occupation, and insurance status have repeatedly been shown to be predictive of health and mortality in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, and a number of other European countries (Marmot et al. 1995; House et al. 1990; Preston and Taubman 1994). Comparing studies is difficult, however, as SES measures are inconsistent and poorly validated. Futhermore, the prognostic value of SES is confounded by diet, lifestyle, and cultural factors, all of which may have ethnic-based variations (Gordon 2003; Newman 2005). Also, minority racial and ethnic groups in the US tend to be disproportionately weighted with poor or socioeconomically deprived persons. In all cases, however, the poor or more deprived have worse outcomes than their more affluent counterparts (Byers et al. 2008; Kim and Jang 2008).

“In all societies, health and functioning vary according to socioeconomic position”

(National Research Council 2001)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard School of Public Health and Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    Sherrie Flynt Wallington & Michelle D. Holmes

  2. Oncology, Medicine and Epidemiology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA

    Otis W. Brawley (Chief Medical Officer, American Cancer Society, Professor of Hematology)

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  1. Sherrie Flynt Wallington
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  2. Otis W. Brawley
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  3. Michelle D. Holmes
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Correspondence to Sherrie Flynt Wallington .

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    Wallington, S.F., Brawley, O.W., Holmes, M.D. (2009). Socioeconomic Status and Breast Cancer Disparities. In: Koh, H. (eds) Toward the Elimination of Cancer Disparities. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89443-0_6

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