Dr. Daphanie Taylor is a hematologist and oncologist at Christus St. Michael W. Temple Webber Cancer Center in Texarkana, Texas. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, her medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, and completed her internal medicine residency at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Taylor discusses breast cancer and how it affects Black women.
Tell us what exactly is a hematologist and oncologist and what do you do?
Hematology-oncology is a sub-specialty of internal medicine. But what I’ve decided to specialize in is hematology, which is blood disorders and blood diseases. Some of you may be familiar with, sickle cell, or different types of leukemias, or oncology, which is the study of cancer. So that would be more your breast cancer, your colon cancer, your kidney cancer, etc.
Let’s talk about what breast cancer is, and why it affects so many Black females.
In 2017, the overall rate of new diagnoses per 100,000 people was 125.1. In White women, it’s 125.8. And Black women 121.3. So you see that there’s not much of a difference in diagnosis. But when you go and look at mortality, which is the rate of death, in White women is 19.3 per 100,000. And in Black women, it’s 26.7. So you see that there’s a much wider gap in mortality where there’s not much of a gap in diagnosis. Black women tend to be diagnosed at a later stage, they tend to have more aggressive cancers than when White women are diagnosed. Some of that has to do with access to care, and other disparities in medicine.
