The African-American community suffers disproportionately high health problems in comparison to white Americans. Cancer, too, creates a burden that is disproportionate to the size of the community.

• Cancer kills more African-Americans than people of any other racial or ethnic group. Overall, African-Americans have a 33 percent higher death rate from cancer than whites.
• The five-year relative survival rate for African-Americans who have cancer is 52 percent, compared to 63 percent for whites.
• African-American men are a higher risk for prostate cancer than any population in the world, according to the National Cancer Institute.
• The National Cancer Institute reports that more white women than African-American women develop breast cancer, but more African-American women die of the disease.
• According to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, African-American women, despite lower incidence rates, continue to have the highest breast cancer mortality rates of any ethnic group.
• The American Cancer Society also reports that from 1983-1990, the chance of surviving five years after breast cancer diagnosis was 76 percent for African-American women, compared to 81 percent for white women.
• When dying, African-American's are less likely to receive palliative care and hospice services. African-Americans, as well as others patients in medically under-served communities, do not use palliative and hospice care services as often as other groups. Less than 10 percent of all hospice patients are African-Americans.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on www.lastacts.org, the Web site for Last Acts, formerly a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Be advised that the content of this article might be dated or inaccurate. The Foundation is reprinting the article here as a matter of general and historical interest.