Impact of Race and Area Deprivation on Triple-Negative Metastatic Breast Cancer Outcomes

Objectives: To describe area deprivation, anxiety, depression, relative dose intensity of first-line metastatic breast cancer (MBC) treatment, and survival in Black and White women who had died from triple-negative MBC, including interaction analysis.

Sample & Setting: This cohort study drew from a database of women who had died from MBC (N = 53).

Methods & Variables: Descriptive statistics, independent t tests, analysis of variance, and Mann–Whitney U tests were used, and effect sizes were calculated.

Results: Compared with White women, Black women reported higher anxiety and depression at MBC baseline. Black women living in areas of higher deprivation experienced shorter overall survival than White women living in similar areas (9.9 months versus 24.6 months). These results were not statistically significant, likely because of a small sample size, but were clinically meaningful.

Implications for Nursing: Black and low-income women with breast cancer experience inferior survival as compared with White and higher-income women. Newer explanatory models for racial disparity in cancer outcomes include the assessment of neighborhood deprivation. White women may be less affected by their neighborhood, even when living in areas of greater deprivation influencing cancer outcomes. This merits further exploration.