Area African-American women most diligent on mammograms

    Through Sunday, 2,200 participants in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure are walking from Willow Grove to the Philadelphia Navy Yard to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research.

    As the walkers call attention to the cause, a survey has revealed new information about breast cancer screening in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

    What’s your image of the woman most likely to have an annual mammogram? If you guessed white, upper middle class and educated, you would be correct on only two counts.

    When it comes to ethnic background, African American women are doing the best job in keeping current.

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    “What we saw were some disparities in terms of who was not getting a mammogram within the past year,” said Nicole Dreisbach of the Public Health Management Corporation, which conducts the survey.

    “And we saw that about 41 percent of Latina women had not had a mammogram in the past year, followed by about 35 percent of white women, 32 percent of Asian women and 31 percent of black women.”

    The survey included 10,000 households in the five-county southeastern Pennsylvania region.

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