When 54-year-old lawyer and mother of two Vicky Ni sought medical help for shoulder pain in 2019, she never imagined it would reveal stage 4 lung cancer. “He was taking X-rays of my neck, and it was only by chance that the bottom corner of the X-ray showed a raised diaphragm,” Ni recalled. “I was stunned beyond words.”
Her case reflects a troubling trend. Lung cancer among Asian American women who have never smoked has been climbing for more than a decade. A California study found that 57% of Asian women diagnosed with lung cancer are nonsmokers—nearly four times the rate of nonsmoking women in other groups.
Epidemiologist Scarlett Gomez said that screening guidelines—often tied to smoking history—determine what insurance will cover, leaving many Asian women without access to early detection. She and University of California San Francisco epidemiologist Iona Cheng received a $12.5 million National Cancer Institute grant to study why this cancer is rising. Gomez cited possible causes such as secondhand smoke, fumes from cooking oil, and genetic mutations that may increase vulnerability to air pollution.
At New York University’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, Dr. Elaine Shum is screening 1,000 Asian women for free. “We are definitely going to need a much larger study to really provide the evidence to try to change the guidelines one day,” she said.
For Ni and her family, the diagnosis changed everything. “Like any cancer, it affects the whole family,” her husband David said, hoping others might be spared through expanded screening.
See: “Lung cancer on the rise in U.S. Asian women who don’t smoke. Experts hope to expand screenings.” (October 28, 2024)
