Survival of African American and non-Hispanic white men with prostate cancer in an equal-access health care system

Abstract

Background: African American (AA) men in the general US population are more than twice as likely to die of prostate cancer (PC) compared with non-Hispanic white (NHW) men. The authors hypothesized that receiving care through the Veterans Affairs (VA) health system, an equal-access medical system, would attenuate this disparity. Methods: A longitudinal, centralized database of >20 million veterans was used to assemble a cohort of 60,035 men (18,201 AA men [30.3%] and 41,834 NHW men [69.7%]) who were diagnosed with PC between 2000 and 2015. Results: AA men were more likely to live in regions with a lower median income ($40,871 for AA men vs $48,125 for NHW men; P