Reducing Breast Cancer Disparities at the State Level: Successes and Lessons Learned from the ASTHO Breast Cancer Learning Community

Dear Collegues,

According to the CDC, black women in the U.S. are approximately 40% more likely to die of breast cancer than white women. In fall 2015, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) gathered a Breast Cancer Disparities Learning Community with state health department breast and cervical cancer programs from Arizona, Tennessee, and West Virginia to identify and close breast cancer disparities. Over the course of the learning community, ASTHO staff worked with state teams and national experts under the guidance of CDC to strengthen states’ epidemiologic and GIS mapping capacity, and implement data-driven action plans with the support of key stakeholders. To date, all three states have conducted data analyses, produced GIS maps, and are executing their action plans to reduce sociodemographic disparities in breast cancer screening, follow-up time after abnormal screening result, and treatment quality.

Join us for this national webinar that will feature presentations from all three state teams that describe the breast cancer disparities in their states, healthcare and community partners involved, and key successes in reducing breast cancer disparities. ASTHO will use this webinar to provide background on the ASTHO learning community and to share a new resource with all attendees, the ASTHO Breast Cancer Disparities Online Toolkit. The toolkit is an electronic repository of lessons learned from the ASTHO Breast Cancer Disparities Learning Community available to other states and stakeholders interested in identifying and addressing breast cancer disparities at the state and local level.