TAMPA, Fla. — Uterine cancers are on the rise in the United States and a recent study shows those numbers are higher among Black women.

When it comes to uterine cancer, the gap for racial disparities is one of the largest when compared to any other cancer in women, according to medical experts.

“Sister to sister, go check yourself out. I don’t care, any little thing that you feel that’s wrong, you know your body and if something doesn’t feel that it’s right, don’t be trying to diagnose yourself. God has given us physicians and people to go and see about it,” said cancer survivor, Julia Russell.

Russell issued a warning to women like her. She said she found out this information about racial disparities with Black women and uterine cancer long after her diagnosis.

“I was really surprised, so I started telling my sisters and my girlfriends all about it as well about uterine cancer,” Russell said. “And a lot of them think like if they went through menopause and they associate a lot of these symptoms with what they have to do with menopause when it really wasn’t.”

She said she didn’t know she was at risk for the disease until warning signs showed up.

“First, I really got a pain in my right-side lower abdomen and that was unusual and then I started brown spotting. And I said I had menopause and I shouldn’t be seeing no blood, no nothing,” she said.

Russell said a visit to her gynecologist and a positive test for uterine cancer landed her at Moffitt Cancer Center in the hands of Medical Director Dr. Mian Shahzad. The two formed a bond through faith and medicine.

“I fell in love with him the first time I met him because I could pray and I let him know about my faith and I believe in God and I believe God sent you to be the person he used to be the instrument to bring forth my healing,” Russell said.

Dr. Shahzad reminded Russell of all she went through over the last two years.

“I think really what you’ve gone through, a lot of treatment from the beginning. Two surgeries and then long chemotherapy, followed by two to three years’ worth of maintenance treatments. It’s a long road you’ve been through,” he said.

Dr. Shahzad says Russell’s diagnosis is something women, especially women of color, need to pay close attention to.

“African-American women have three times higher mortality of dying from the same cancer that a white woman would have,” he said. “African-American women have more of a chance of having a more aggressive form of uterine cancer than white women would and we just don’t know the reason. And that’s where the studies are focusing on trying to see why.”

He said finding the reason for that is complex.

“It’s very multifactorial. It has to do as you know, from the resource settings, to the stage of diagnosis which people used to think those were probably the only two reasons because maybe the access to care is different. And that is true, but I think along with that it also has to do with the different types of cancers,” said Dr. Shahzad.

Studies show Black women are more likely to develop a form called non-endometrioid uterine cancer, which is more aggressive.

“What is the real reason behind it? Is it the Medicare payments, the lack of access? And that’s from every direction. Access means patient asking for care or patient when asking not giving the appropriate care,” said Dr. Shahzad.

Dr. Shahzad says clinical trials are currently underway at Moffitt to try and get to the why, and he’s hoping more Black women sign up to be a part of that clinical trail and others like it.

“Moffitt is also spearheading initiatives to enroll a high number of African-American patients, non-Hispanic, Black patients, into trials, so we can actually serve that population and have data that is specific to African-Americans,” he said.

According to the JAMA study examining racial and ethnic differences in hysterectomy-corrected uterine corpus cancer mortality when examining the uterine cancer death rate for women ages 40 and up, there are disparities. The death rate for Black women is 31.4 per 100,000 women, compared to 15.2 per 100,000 for white women in the same age group, according to the study. Death rates for Asian-American women were nine per 100,000, and for Hispanic Americans, 12.3 per 100,000.