Black women may not get the full benefits of mammogram screenings because the results are not adequately communicated, according to a new study by Yale Public Health researchers in the March issue of American Journal of Public Health.

To help reduce death and disability from breast cancer, the second most common cause of cancer death in American women, current guidelines recommend routine mammography screening for women aged 40 years and older. Despite widespread availability of mammography screening and relatively high self-reported screening rates in national survey data, racial disparities persist, in part resulting from diagnosis at later stages in black women when compared to white women.

Beth A. Jones, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale School of Medicine led the study. In this community-based, two-year study of black and white women receiving mammograms in Connecticut, the investigators sought possible race-related differences in the screening mammography process.

Jones and colleagues compared self-reported mammogram results, collected by telephone interview, to results listed in the radiology record of 411 black women and 734 white women aged 40 to 79 who underwent screening in five hospital-based facilities in Connecticut. They examined whether black women were as likely as white women to self-report results that matched the mammography radiology report. A second objective was to determine how the results of a screening mammogram affected the communication of those results.