Here’s what you need to know to talk to your doctor about your breast cancer risk and available screening options.

When I was 23 years old, I asked my primary care doctor about what steps I could take to prevent breast cancer. 

The provider dismissed my concerns. I was “too young” to be worried about it, I recalled the provider saying, unless someone in my family had died from the disease. 

What she would have known if she had simply asked, was that just one week prior, I held a funeral for my mother, who died of breast cancer. 

My mom was one of the disproportionate number of Black women diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer, which is the latest stage and occurs when the disease has spread to organs in other parts of the body. She also died from it, an outcome that is 41 percent more likely for Black women than white women, even though Black women are less likely to have breast cancer in the first place. 

Losing my mom to breast cancer is the worst thing that has happened in my life. And fear about my risk and confusion around how to ensure I’m being adequately monitored by providers have been near-constant struggles in the seven years since her death.

So I spoke with Dr. Demetria Smith-Graziani, who treats patients with breast cancer at the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory Midtown in Atlanta, about why breast cancer mortality is so much higher in Black women, what symptoms patients should look out for, and what screening options are available. 

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Black women are more likely to be diagnosed with a more advanced or aggressive breast cancer, and are also more likely to die of breast cancer than white women. Why? 

That’s a great question, and something that we are still trying to figure out. But big picture wise, even though white women in the U.S. have a higher incidence of breast cancer compared to Black women, Black women have a higher mortality rate. It’s about 40 percent higher. They are more likely to be diagnosed at a younger age, at a higher stage, and more likely to be diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer and more aggressive forms of breast cancer. 

As we think about the different components, the big categories are the biological contributors, the structural social contributors, and then there’s times when there’s interplay between those two. 

On the biological side of........

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