Scars as Stories: Breast Cancer in the Black Community
January 21, 2014The Affordable Care Act has expanded access to services for 7.3 million in the Black community. It is giving many people access to a variety of preventive services like mammograms, breastfeeding support, and prenatal care, as well as coverage for issues formerly considered pre-existing conditions. This is huge for breast cancer advocates who have long been encouraging early detection and screening, and has the potential to positively affect breast cancer rates among Black women, for whom breast cancer is the second most common cancer. But improving access wasn’t the only problem facing Black women with regard to breast cancer survival—we’ve allowed our fear and the stigma associated with illness and poverty to silence our stories, and that silence is literally killing us.