How Does Insurance Status Impact Cervical Cancer Diagnosis?
Health insurance status has some clear impacts on cervical cancer stage at diagnosis. Expert Dr. Shannon MacLaughlan from University of Illinois discusses key points from her cervical cancer research findings.
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Transcript:
Lisa Hatfield:
Dr. MacLaughlan, how does your research highlight the role of health insurance status in influencing the stage at which cervical cancer is diagnosed among different racial and ethnic groups?
Shannon MacLaughlan:
Well, we found that patients who have private insurance or Medicare are much more likely for their cervical cancer to be diagnosed in an early stage than an advanced stage. We already knew going into this particular work on the SEER database, we already knew that there were some inequities that broke out by race and ethnicity, such that Black patients, Hispanic patients, and Native American and Alaska Native patients were more likely to present with an advanced stage cervical cancer than their non-Hispanic white counterparts. And it turns out that having insurance can mitigate that discrepancy.
Now, that research is really designed to teach a system that we have to do better. That research is hard to package into something for a particular person to do differently in their life. It’s easy to say, “Go get insurance.” But we all know that in real life, it is not that easy. So what’s really going on here is that screening programs are effective in populations who are getting screened, and insurance is a marker of someone who has access to primary care and preventive care and the ability to focus on health at all.
