Racial/ethnic differences in job loss for women with breast cancer

Thirty-three African American breast cancer survivors age 45 or younger participated in semi-structured phone interviews about psychosocial concerns. Twenty-six percent believed treatment interfered with employment. One third wanted additional emotional support at and after diagnosis. Half felt cancer negatively influenced romantic relationships. Forty-five percent wanted children at diagnosis, but half these women never received fertility information. One third reported sexual problems, but 73% never discussed sexuality with providers. Fifty-two percent lacked information about cancer-related sexual dysfunction. The strength and spirituality of African American women may facilitate cancer adjustment, but cultural taboos surrounding women’s health issues may interfere with successful coping.

Employment status is related to treatment recovery and quality of life in breast cancer survivors, yet little is known about return to work in immigrant and minority survivors. We conducted an exploratory qualitative study using ethnically cohesive focus groups of urban breast cancer survivors who were African-American, African-Caribbean, Chinese, Filipina, Latina, or non-Latina white. We audio- and video-recorded, transcribed, and thematically coded the focus group discussions and we analyzed the coded transcripts within and across ethnic groups. Seven major themes emerged related to the participants' work experiences after diagnosis: normalcy, acceptance, identity, appearance, privacy, lack of flexibility at work, and employer support. Maintaining a sense of normalcy was cited as a benefit of working by survivors in each group. Acceptance of the cancer diagnosis was most common in the Chinese group and in participants who had a family history of breast cancer; those who described this attitude were likely to continue working throughout the treatment period. Appearance was important among all but the Chinese group and was related to privacy, which many thought was necessary to derive the benefit of normalcy at work. Employer support included schedule flexibility, medical confidentiality, and help maintaining a normal work environment, which was particularly important to our study sample. Overall, we found few differences between the different ethnic groups in our study. These results have important implications for the provision of support services to and clinical management of employed women with breast cancer, as well as for further large-scale research in disparities and employment outcomes.

Background Despite improved survival with chemotherapy for stage III colorectal cancer (CRC), patients may suffer substantial economic hardship during treatment. Methods for quantifying financial burden in CRC patients are lacking. Objective To derive and validate a novel patient-reported measure of personal financial burden during CRC treatment. Data Collection Within a population-based survey of patients in the Detroit and Georgia Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results regions diagnosed with stage III CRC between 2011 and 2013, we asked 7 binary questions assessing effects of disease and treatment on personal finances. Data Analysis We used factor analysis to compute a composite measure of financial burden. We used χ2 tests to evaluate relationships between individual components of financial burden and chemotherapy use with χ2 analyses. We used Mantel-Haenszel χ2 trend tests to examine relationships between the composite financial burden metric and chemotherapy use. Results Among 956 patient surveys (66% response rate), factor analysis of 7 burden items yielded a single-factor solution. Factor loadings of 6 items were >0.4; these were included in the composite score. Internal consistency was high (Cronbach α = 0.79). The mean financial burden score among all respondents was 1.72 (range, 0–6). The 812 (85%) who reported chemotherapy use had significantly higher financial burden scores than those who did not (mean burden score 1.88 vs. 0.88, P < 0.001). Conclusions Financial burden is high among CRC patients, particularly those who use adjuvant chemotherapy. We encourage use of our instrument to validate our measure in the identification of patients in need of additional financial support during treatment.