Rurality Partly Explains Racial Difference in Distance to Lung Cancer Screening

MONDAY, Jan. 13, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Differences in distance to lung cancer screening (LCS) facilities by race and ethnicity are partly explained by rurality, according to a study published online Jan. 14 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Solmaz Amiri, from the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine at Washington State University in Seattle, and colleagues examined race-, ethnicity-, and rurality-based differences in distance to the nearest LCS facility in a cross-sectional ecological study involving 71,691 census tracts.

The researchers found that the geometric mean distance to the nearest LCS facility was 6.5 miles. The distance to the nearest LCS facility was 426 percent longer in American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN)-majority census tracts and 7 to 39 percent shorter in Asian-, Black-, and Hispanic-majority census tracts compared with non-Hispanic White-majority census tracts. The mean distance in AI/AN-majority census tracts was reduced with adjustment for rurality, but the mean distance was still 3.16 times that seen in non-Hispanic White-majority census tracts. The observed advantage in Asian- and Black-majority census tracts was reduced with adjustment for rurality, and the direction of the association in Hispanic-majority tracts was changed.

“Future research documenting the extent to which equitable access to LCS facilities affects LCS uptake and lung cancer outcomes would be an important contribution to achieving cancer health care equity,” the authors write.

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