Determinants of late stage diagnosis of breast and cervical cancer: the impact of age, race, social class, and hospital type.

Previous studies of the relationship between cancer stage, age, and race have not controlled for social class and health care setting. Logistic regression analyses, using information from the New York State Tumor Registry and area-level social class indicators, demonstrated that, in New York City, older Black, lower class women in public hospitals were 3.75 and 2.54 times more likely to have late stage breast or cervical cancer, respectively, than were younger White, high social class women in non-public hospitals.