Racial and Ethnic Variations in Cancer Pain Treatment and Outcomes

Racial and ethnic health disparities have been well documented in the areas of pain epidemiology, access to quality pain care, pain assessment and treatments, as well as pain-related outcomes. These disparities emerge around patient-level factors, such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age and gender for all types of pain. In response to these above concerns, this study examined the sources of variance in cancer diagnosis, cancer pain prevalence, pain treatment, and treatment efficacy in an effort to identify disparate outcomes utilizing data from the multi-state 2012 Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This study allowed for the ability to control for access-related factors, as well as multiple psychosocial variables such as age, income, education, gender, health care coverage, general health, etc. Moreover, this study was able to observe variations in outcomes amongst subjects with all forms of cancer, rather than selecting individuals with a single diagnosis as many other studies have done.