When it comes to the deadliest form of skin cancer, melanoma, a lack of awareness of its risk is proving deadly for minorities. Researchers from the Miller School’s Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery have published an important study that shows melanoma is diagnosed later among blacks and Hispanics compared with white patients, and those patients also tend to present with more advanced melanoma and suffer a higher death rate.

“Our hypothesis is that this is due to a lack of screening and a lack of awareness. While it is possible the biology of melanoma is more aggressive in certain populations, we believe it is more likely a public health issue,” says Robert Kirsner, M.D., Ph.D., professor and vice chairman of the Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery. “I think the current message about melanoma should be extended beyond just light-skinned, white populations to Hispanic and darker pigmented populations.”

The study, published in the Archives of Dermatology, examined 1,690 cases of melanoma diagnosed in Miami-Dade County from 1997 to 2002. Almost 70 percent were in non-Hispanic white patients, just over 28 percent in Hispanics, and 2 percent in black patients. But compared with whites, Hispanics were nearly twice as likely and blacks three times as likely to have advanced melanoma when they were diagnosed.