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News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, Nov. 18, 2002

Contacts: CDC Press Office
Michael Greenwell (770) 488-5131
NCI Press Office
Mike Miller (301) 496-6641

HHS ISSUES CANCER INCIDENCE DATA BY STATE FOR FIRST TIME

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today released U.S. Cancer Statistics: 1999 Incidence, the most comprehensive federal data available to date on state-specific cancer incidence rates.

"With this new data, we can better identify, understand, and address differences in cancer rates across the country," Secretary Thompson said. "The state and regional data will prove invaluable to public health officials as they plan and evaluate cancer control programs and conduct research."

Produced jointly by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), in collaboration with the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, this report provides state-specific and regional data for cancer cases diagnosed in 1999, the most recent year for which data are available.

The new data, compiled from cancer registries that have met criteria and standards of accuracy, completeness and timeliness, are from 37 states, six metropolitan areas, and the District of Columbia and represent about 78 percent of the U.S. population. Previous reports on cancer incidence used data from smaller samples of the U.S. population.

Information from population-based central cancer registries is critical for directing effective cancer prevention and control programs or other interventions. Such activities may focus on preventing behaviors that put people at increased risk for cancer (such as tobacco use and physical inactivity) and on reducing environmental risk factors (such as occupational exposures to known carcinogens).

The findings include:

The leading cancer in men, regardless of race, is prostate cancer, followed by lung/bronchus and colon/rectal. Prostate cancer rates are 1.5 times higher in black men than white men.
The leading cancer in women, regardless of race, is breast cancer, followed by lung/bronchus and colon/rectal in white women, and colon/rectal and lung/bronchus in black women. Breast cancer rates are about 20 percent higher in white women than in black women.
Melanomas of the skin and cancer of the testis are among the top 15 cancers for white men, but not black men.
Melanomas of the skin and cancer of the brain/other nervous systems are among the top 15 cancers for white women, but not black women.
Multiple myeloma (cancer that arises in plasma cells) and cancer of the stomach are among the top 15 cancers for black women, but not white women.
Multiple myeloma and cancer of the liver are among the top 15 cancers for black men, but not white men.

The report also shows geographic variations in the occurrence of cancer in the United States. It does not include information about cancer deaths.

Researchers will continue to examine the quality of data associated with race, ethnicity, completeness of reporting, and the effects of using census projections from 1990. Data collection procedures for identifying specific racial and ethnic populations vary widely from registry to registry; therefore, only data for blacks and whites are included in this report.

Future United States Cancer Statistics reports will include data for other racial and ethnic populations. Cancer rates usually have some uncertainty associated with them and are updated as more information becomes available from registries and as better estimates of state and regional populations become available from the U.S. Census Bureau. The process of recalculating cancer rates is standard practice.

The full report is available at

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Note: All HHS press releases, fact sheets and other press materials are available at www.hhs.gov/news.

Last Revised: November 18, 2002

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