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 The findings were consistent with stories Molly MacDonald hears at
the Pink Fund, a Rochester Hills, Michigan, nonprofit she started to
offer financial help to women with breast cancer in 2006, after
treatment for the disease left her jobless and bankrupt.
“While fighting for their lives, many patients lose their
livelihoods,” MacDonald said in a phone interview.
The loss disproportionately strikes poor women, probably because
low-wage hourly workers tend to be more easily replaceable, and
their employers are less likely to accommodate their needs as they
go through time-consuming and draining treatment, MacDonald said.
Dr. Victoria Blinder, a breast cancer oncologist at Memorial Sloan
Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, led a team of researchers
who analyzed the job status of 267 racially and ethnically diverse
women treated for invasive breast cancer between 2010 and 2016.
Income and employers’ willingness to make workplace accommodations
were the driving factors in whether women retained their jobs four
months after finishing breast cancer treatment, the researchers
found.
Low-income women were only half as likely as higher-income women to
have accommodating employers and only one-fourth as likely to keep
their jobs, according to the results in Health Affairs.
“We showed that if they’re able to obtain work accommodations,
they’re more likely to retain their jobs,” Blinder said in a phone
interview. “The key is to try to help women so they advocate for
themselves and optimize their chances of staying on a job they want
to keep.”
Patients have told her that when they’re not working, they’re often
in bed thinking about cancer.
“The psychological impact of going through a diagnosis and these
treatments can be profound. Work for a lot of people is a way to
escape that and to feel like they are in control,” she said.
Race and ethnicity had little impact on whether women kept their
jobs, the study found, although Chinese participants were less
likely to continue working than white women, a statistic diluted by
the small number of women in both categories.
“The value of the paper is there does not seem to be much ethnic or
racial bias here,” said Dr. Patricia Ganz, professor at the UCLA
Fielding School of Public Health in Los Angeles.
“The more important thing is the kind of employment. If you’re low
income, your employer is more likely going to be inflexible about
keeping your spot,” she said in a phone interview.
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“It’s a social and equity issue,” she said.
Ganz and Blinder both said they frequently write letters to
employers on behalf of patients who need help advocating for
themselves. In some cases, the fix is as simple as providing more
breaks or allowing time off for treatment.
In other cases, MacDonald said, saving a job could be impossible,
if, for example, a bus driver who underwent a mastectomy feels pain
every time she shifts gears while driving.
Blinder is working on developing a mobile health app that would
coach women on negotiation strategies for accommodations.
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, government employers and
private employers with 15 or more employees must make “reasonable
accommodations” for workers diagnosed with cancer.
Nearly one in eight American women will be diagnosed with breast
cancer in her lifetime, the authors write.
A 2016 study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that people
who underwent cancer treatment and filed for bankruptcy protection
were more likely to die than those who remained financially healthy.
A previous Health Affairs report found that one-third of working-age
cancer survivors go into debt, and 3 percent file for bankruptcy.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2kGa0NR Health Affairs, online February 1,
2017
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