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Language a
Barrier to Colorectal Cancer Screening in
Mexican-Americans
By
Valerie DeBenedette, Contributing Writer
Health
Behavior News Service
More
than 40 percent of Mexican-Americans in
California have never had either of the most
common screening tests for colorectal
cancer, compared with 22 percent of
non-Latino white Californians, which could
be due to language barriers between patients
and physicians, suggests a new study from
San Diego State University.
Nationally, Latinos are more likely to
receive a diagnosis of colorectal cancer in
advanced stages and have a lower survival
rate than non-Latino whites.
In the
study of nearly 17,000 California residents
ages 50 and older, a greater percentage of
those of Mexican descent said they had
problems with language when dealing with
health providers. About 30 percent of
Californians are of Mexican descent or
birth.
The findings, which appear in the summer
issue of the journal Ethnicity & Disease,
is based on information collected in the
2005 California Health Interview Survey, a
telephone survey.
About three times as many Mexican-Americans
as non-Latino whites said they had never had
an endoscopy or a fecal occult blood test,
the most common screening methods for
colorectal cancer, because they did not know
they needed to be screened. Sixty-seven
percent of Mexican-Americans said they
needed someone to help them understand the
doctor, compared with 20 percent of
non-Latino whites.
However, the study might overstate the
importance of language problems as a barrier
to screening for colorectal cancer,
according to an expert who had no
affiliation with the study.
The disparity in screening levels might also
be due to cultural issues not unique to
Hispanics, said Luisa Borrell, an associate
professor with the graduate program in
public health at Lehman College, City
University of New York.
It might have been better to make a
comparison to Asian-Americans, said Borrell,
citing lopsided proportions from a 2002
ethnic breakdown of California physicians.
Although Hispanics make up roughly a third
of the state’s population, only 4 percent of
physicians are Hispanic. Yet,
Asian-Americans, who make up 12 percent of
the population, represent 22 percent of the
state’s physicians.
“The pipeline for Hispanics to increase the
number of physicians is not ready to match
the demand of the fast-growing Hispanic
population now or in the near future,” she
said.
California was one of the first states to
pass a law requiring a translator in health
care settings, Borrell said. “The
appropriate use of medical translators in
California could alleviate the language
barrier not only for Hispanics, but also
other minority groups.”
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