Racial Distribution of Patient Population and Family Physician Endorsed Importance of Screening Patients for Inherited Predisposition to Cancer

Uptake of genetic testing is higher among racial majority versus minority patients for reasons that remain unclear. Primary care physicians represent the front line of screening for inherited cancer risk. We surveyed family physicians enrolled in the Massachusetts Practice Based Research Network to assess whether their attitudes about cancer-predictive genetic testing related to the race of their patients. Among the 65 physicians who responded (91.5% response rate), those whose practices had higher proportions of White patients were more likely to strongly endorse the value of screening for inherited cancer risk (OR_adj 3.18, 95% CI 1.05, 9.66). These findings, though limited by use of a small convenience sample, suggest that clinical attention to screening for genetic cancer risk is greater in practices serving fewer racial minority patients. More research is necessary to confirm these findings and to determine whether these factors affect disparities in genetic testing and health outcomes.