Latinos Have Their Own Cancer Statistics

September is Cancer Awareness Month

The American Cancer Society publishes a report every 3 years titled Cancer Facts & Figures for Hispanics/Latinos.  The present report, for the years 2009 to 2111, has interesting findings for this, the fastest growing segment of the US population.  Here are some highlights.

 Hispanics have a lower death rate from cancer than non-Hispanic whites.  However, they also die earlier than whites, and cancer risk rises with age, so this finding may be merely an age-related effect. 

Hispanics are less likely to die from the 4 most common cancers: breast, prostate, colorectal, and lung. But they’re more likely to have cancers related to infections, e.g. stomach, liver, and uterine cervix.   

Genetics may be responsible for some of these differences.  But, for the most part, environmental and socioeconomic factors are paramount.  Hispanics are less likely to have preventive treatment (e.g. human papillovirus vaccine to forestall cervical cancer) or timely diagnosis (e.g. breast cancers and melanomas are diagnosed in later stages in Hispanics). 

We hope that a new healthcare system will allow most, if not all, US Latinos to get preventive and diagnostic care to match that available to the rest of the US population.  Then we would see whether the patterns of different cancers in different races become similar, with time.