AHCJ July 5, 2024
When covering the subject of health disparities, reporters often portray statistics by comparing one racial or ethnic group to another. Typically, media coverage highlights “group disadvantage,” often leading with an emphasis on the community that’s at greater risk, for example by saying that Black women are 40 percent more likely to die from breast cancer than white women.
In a January study, researchers at Cornell University ran two experiments to test how this sort of social comparison affected people’s understanding of their health risks. One experiment analyzed a message about differences in breast cancer mortality rates amongst Black and white women; the other a message about how Black individuals were less likely to get screened for colorectal cancer than...
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