cancer is Second leading cause of death In the United States, second only to heart failure.However, in recent years we have seen improved prevention, screening and treatment help 3.5 million U.S. deaths averted in the past 3 years.
Despite these advances, we do see a high disparity in cancer mortality across racial and ethnic groups.a study Lawrence et al. (2022), did find – consistent with trends in the wider population – that black mortality rates have declined in recent years. Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics’ national death certificate data from 1999 to 2019, the authors found:
From 1999 to 2019, cancer mortality decreased by 2.0% per year in black individuals (change, -120.1/100 000 population), with a larger decline in men (change, -200.1/100 000 population; AAPC, -2.6%) [95% CI, −2.6% to −2.6%]) higher than women (-74.8/100 000 population; AAPC -1.5% [95% CI, −1.7% to −1.3%])…Decreases were observed in most cancer sites except the liver and uterus in the elderly, with the largest declines in male lung cancer and female gastric cancer.
Despite the improvement in survival rates, the cancer death rate for blacks is still far higher than for any other racial group.
While the trend is positive, there is still a lot of room for improvement in how our healthcare system screens and treats black Americans for cancer.
