Mapping hot spots of breast cancer mortality in the United States: place matters for Blacks and Hispanics.

PURPOSE: The goals of this study were to identify geographic and racial/ethnic variation in breast cancer mortality, and evaluate whether observed geographic differences are explained by county-level characteristics.METHODS: We analyzed data on breast cancer deaths among women in 3,108 contiguous United States (US) counties from years 2000 through 2015. We applied novel geospatial methods and identified hot spot counties based on breast cancer mortality rates. We assessed differences in county-level characteristics between hot spot and other counties using Wilcoxon rank-sum test and Spearman correlation, and stratified all analysis by race/ethnicity.RESULTS: Among all women, 80 of 3,108 (2.57%) contiguous US counties were deemed hot spots for breast cancer mortality with the majority located in the southern region of the US (72.50%, p value CONCLUSIONS: We observed geographic and racial/ethnic disparities in breast cancer mortality: NH-Black and Hispanic breast cancer deaths were more concentrated in southern, lower SES counties.

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