RESUMO
Community Health Centers (CHCs) primarily serve low-income and vulnerable patients. Breast cancer screening recently became a quality-of-care metric in the annual Uniform Data System (UDS) report, and this study examines the first year of breast cancer screening data among 1375 CHCs in the United States. Clinics with available screening data (n = 1070) were categorized based on US region, state expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act, ranked terciles of race/ethnic composition (non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic Asian, and Hispanic/Latino patients), and proportion uninsured. Less than half of women eligible for breast cancer screening, 43.6% (95% CI:42.6%, 44.6%), were up-to-date. CHCs with medium or high proportions of Black (PR: 0.91, 0.86) and uninsured (PR: 0.90, 0.86) patients had between 9%-14% lower breast cancer screening rates than CHCs with low proportions of these populations. CHCs in Medicaid expansion states and in Northeastern states had significantly higher screening rates than non-expansion states and the Midwest, South, and Western states. In conclusion, our findings show that only half of women eligible who received care within CHCs were screened for breast cancer. Disparities in breast cancer screening rates are seen for clinics with high proportions of Black and uninsured patients, along with clinics outside the northeast and clinics in non-Medicaid expansion states. Targeted solutions centered around reducing cost, improving quality, and reducing structural disparities are needed to address low rates of breast cancer screening in low-income women who visited CHCs and already experience healthcare inequities.
