Charmella Roark remembers the shock that stopped her in her tracks when she learned about her younger sister\u2019s cancer diagnosis. <\/p>\n
In 2018, Kiki Roark wrote in their family\u2019s group text that she had been diagnosed with stage I breast cancer \u2013 the same disease that had taken their aunt\u2019s life just a few years prior. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was in disbelief,\u201d Charmella said of her sister\u2019s diagnosis. \u201cThat\u2019s my first best friend.\u201d <\/p>\n
The New Jersey sisters never would have guessed that four years later, Charmella would receive the same diagnosis. <\/p>\n
The Roark sisters represent an ongoing trend emerging in the United States: More younger women are being diagnosed with cancer. <\/strong> <\/p>\n Cancer rates have generally declined among men in the US early this century before leveling out, yet they appear to be climbing among women \u2013 especially young women. Cancer diagnoses are shifting from older to younger adults and from men to women, according to <\/strong>a report released Thursday by the American Cancer Society. <\/p>\n Middle\u2010age women now have a slightly higher cancer risk than their male counterparts, and <\/strong>young women are nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with the disease as young men, according to the report, published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. It appears that breast and thyroid cancers in women are driving this increasing trend. <\/p>\n \u201cBreast and thyroid cancer account for almost half of all cancer diagnoses in women younger than 50,\u201d said Rebecca Siegel, lead author of the report and senior scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society. <\/p>\n Kiki was 37 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2018. <\/p>\n Sharp pain in her armpit had radiated to her breast, and she had asked three of her doctors to order a mammogram to check for cancer. But each told her that a mammogram was unnecessary at her age, she said. <\/p>\n \u201cJust because I was younger, I feel like they didn\u2019t take me seriously,\u201d Kiki said. \u201cBut I kept pushing the issue, saying, \u2018No, something\u2019s not right.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n It took months, Kiki said, but she eventually got a mammogram. It showed signs of cancer, and a biopsy confirmed the diagnosis. <\/p>\n \u201cI was an early stage,\u201d said Kiki, a mother of three who works from home. <\/p>\n For treatment, she had both breasts removed in a double mastectomy and received the hormone therapy drug tamoxifen. <\/p>\n Charmella stayed by her sister\u2019s side throughout the illness. And in the years after, Charmella said, she was inspired to stay on top of her routine breast cancer screenings by getting mammograms. <\/p>\n In the summer of 2022, one of those mammograms revealed that Charmella, a high school teacher and mother of two, had stage I breast cancer. She was 44 at the time. <\/p>\n After getting her own diagnosis, Charmella immediately called Kiki. <\/p>\n \u201cI was devastated,\u201d Kiki said. \u201cThe first thing I thought: not again.\u201d <\/p>\n Charmella quickly started treatment: six rounds of chemotherapy and a month of radiation. <\/p>\n Charmella and Kiki had found themselves among the estimated 1 in 3 women in the US who will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lifetime. <\/p>\n Men historically have had a higher overall cancer incidence than women, but in 2021, women younger than 50 in the United States had an 82% higher cancer incidence rate than their male peers, according to the new American Cancer Society report, which involved data from the National Cancer Institute, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. <\/p>\n \u201cWe see for the first time, if you\u2019re a woman under the age of 65, you\u2019re now more likely to develop cancer than men in that same age group,\u201d said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer for the American Cancer Society. <\/p>\n \u201cThe other thing is, we\u2019re seeing a change in \u2013 at the time of cancer diagnosis \u2013 the age of which patients develop cancer,\u201d Dahut said. <\/p>\n \u201cAge remains the number-one greatest risk factor for cancer overall, and that hasn\u2019t changed. But we\u2019re seeing some shifting,\u201d he said. For men and women combined, \u201cthe only age group where we\u2019re seeing actually an increase in cancer risk, in incidence going up, is under the age of 50.\u201d <\/p>\n Charmella, now 47, and Kiki, 44, are cancer-free and doing well, but they know that as Black women in the United States, they are part of a community facing significant disparities in cancer outcomes. <\/p>\n \u2018We\u2019re seeing some shifting\u2019<\/h2>\n
A call to \u2018advocate for yourself\u2019<\/h2>\n