Houston Black women at higher risk for breast cancer

Just a coincidence if you live within a mile of a polluter, too.

Black women in Houston die of breast cancer at a rate 45 percent greater than the mortality rate of white women, according to a new study whose findings are being attributed to the city's crisis of uninsured residents.

The disparity, 11 percentage points higher than the national average and four times worse than New York City's, is prompting local health experts to mobilize a task force to study the problem and recommend ways to fix it. That task force will be announced today.

"The racial disparity in breast cancer mortality rates in Houston, like elsewhere, is a symptom of a broken health care system," said Steve Whitman, director of the Sinai Urban Health Institute in Chicago, who led the study. "The system delivers the benefits of recent advances in breast cancer treatment to white women, but not black women."