Receiving a cancer diagnosis is a devastating blow, the outcome of treatment given dependent on when cancer within the body is detected. Up until very recently, research into the diagnosis of cancer within black people had been scarce, the NHS and Cancer Research UK having recently conducted a study including almost 700,000 diagnoses of 6 cancer types – breast, colon, non-small cell lung, ovary, prostate and uterine across five ethnic groups in England from 2012-2016. From this research, it was found that black women from Caribbean and African backgrounds are more likely to be diagnosed with certain types of cancer at later stages – 3 or 4 when treatment is less likely to be successful (Cancer Research UK) and. Zoning in on this seldom talked about topic of how cancer impacts black communities, in this particular case breast cancer, Naomi Denny confronts this with show Unseen, Unheard.
Continue reading