Reducing Health Disparities

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Cancer impacts everyone, but it doesn’t impact everyone equally. We are working to ensure everyone has a fair and just opportunity to prevent, find, treat, and survive cancer. No one should be disadvantaged in their fight against cancer because of how much money they make, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, their gender identity, their disability status, or where they live.

From ensuring greater diversity among clinical trial participants to improving access to quality, affordable health care, we are asking lawmakers to reduce disparities in cancer care by advancing policies that break down existing barriers.

Black women are 40% more likely to die of breast cancer than white women overall

Latest Updates

March 26, 2024
Hawaii

American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) volunteers from across Hawaii met with their legislators at the Hawaii State Capitol Thursday to urge them to support HB1301. If enacted, the policy would enable funding for a multiethnic cohort study by the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, the only National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in the Hawaii Pacific region.

March 18, 2024

At the American Cancer Society and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to prevent, detect, treat, and survive cancer. As part of our deep commitment to advancing health equity, ACS CAN launched new policy

February 22, 2024
National

A new paper released today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology finds that while incorporating pharmacogenomic (PGx) testing into cancer care can help improve patient outcomes, barriers to PGx testing, discovery, and implementation are impacting its adoption and creating disparities that impact diverse populations.

February 2, 2024
National

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) was joined by 20 other organizations in proposing the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General adopt a new regulatory safe harbor from the Anti-kickback Statute that would allow clinical trial sponsors to financially support

Reducing Health Disparities Resources

The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) supports policies and funding that increase access to “Food is Medicine” (or food as medicine) initiatives and interventions intended to prevent, treat, or manage chronic diseases and often address food and nutrition insecurity.

Our ability to continue to make progress against cancer relies heavily on eliminating inequities that exist in breast cancer prevention and treatment. That is why ACS CAN advocates for policies to reduce the disparities in breast cancer by improving access to prevention and early detection services, patient navigation services, insurance coverage, in-network facilities, and clinical trials.

Access to care for those who are uninsured not only ensures that serious diseases like cancer can be detected and treated earlier but also often means better patient outcomes and less costs to the individual and the larger health care system.