Asian Pacific Americans consistently trail other racial and ethnic groups in cancer screening, especially for cervical and breast cancer, according to a new study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. The study shows that racial and ethnic disparities exist in cancer screening rates and within the APA population, ethnic subgroups differ substantially in their rate of cancer screening at recommended intervals, with APAs, who have limited English proficiency, having the lowest cancer screening rates among APAs statewide.
Ninez Ponce, one of the authors of the study and an assistant professor at the UCLA School of Public Health said an earlier study that suggested APAs had one of the lowest cancer screening rates prompted the center to release this new fact sheet. Researchers gathered information from the California Health Interview Survey, a telephone survey of over 55,000 households in California conducted in 2001. More than 6,000 APAs were interviewed in Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, Khmer, Spanish and English.
The study shows considerable variations within the various APA ethnic groups on the frequency of cancer screening tests. All APA ethnic subgroups, except Filipino women, fall significantly below the overall cervical cancer screening rate for California (86.2 percent), while Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, South Asian and Cambodian women have lower rates of Pap smears, a test for cervical cancers, in the past three years than California's average. Researchers say this is a disturbing statistic since a National Institutes of Health report showed Vietnamese American women are five times more likely than white women to have cervical cancer.
Language ability seemed to play a part in those who received routine Pap tests. Among Chinese American women, the proportion reporting a Pap test is lower for limited English-proficient women (56.7 percent) than that for English-proficient women (75.5 percent).
With routine mammograms, Cambodian American and Korean American women have had rates far below the state average continuously for the past two years compared to all women over the age of 40 in California. But the study also cited that language acted as a barrier to preventive care services. While 63.8 percent of English-proficient Korean American women received mammograms within the past two years, only 45.4 percent with limited English proficiency reported having a mammogram. .Tests for colon rectal cancer screening are very low overall for California (53.2 percent), but even lower for Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean and Cambodian men and women," Ponce said.. (Source: May Chow, AsianWeek, Dec. 12-17, 2003)