The United States has made great strides against cancer recently, with overall deaths from the disease declining for 2 years in a row. But a new report from the American Cancer Society warns that this progress is threatened by disturbing trends in cancer prevention and early detection efforts.
Tobacco control and cancer screening are of particular concern, according to Cancer Prevention and Early Detection Facts & Figures 2007 (CPED), the annual ACS report examining the factors that influence cancer cases and deaths. The ever-expanding waistlines of both adults and children in America are also a serious problem.
"Much of the suffering and death from cancer could be prevented by more systematic efforts to reduce tobacco use, improve diet, increase activity levels, and expand the use of established screening tests," says John R. Seffrin, PhD, national chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society. "But this report shows we may be losing momentum in some key areas that have been critical to our success."
One such area is tobacco control. Tobacco use is expected to cause some 168,000 cancer deaths this year alone, and overall it's the single largest preventable cause of disease and death in the US.
Reducing tobacco use among adults and children is a top priority in the fight against cancer. Smoking causes cancers of the lung, larynx, mouth and throat, esophagus, and bladder, and contributes to several other types of cancer. About 40% of the recent decline in cancer deaths among men is due to declines in their smoking rates over the past 50 years, the report says.
Although smoking rates among both youth and adults began dropping in 1997, that decline appears to have stalled. Smoking rates among high school students did not change significantly between 2003 and 2005, the report says. Likewise, adult smoking rates were also basically unchanged from 2004 to 2005.
Higher tobacco taxes, restrictions on smoking in public places, counter-advertising, and coverage for quit-smoking programs and services are all effective means of curbing tobacco use. Unfortunately, funding for such programs falls far short of what is needed, the report says. For every $1 spent on tobacco control in the US in 2003, the tobacco industry spent $23 promoting products.
More money is also needed for cancer screening programs that help people with low incomes or no insurance. Cancer screening tests can find the disease at its earliest stage, when treatments are more likely to be successful.
ACS is pressing Congress to boost funding for the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, run by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although this program helps more than 400,000 women get the mammograms and Pap tests they need every year, that's just 13% of the uninsured and low income women eligible for this lifesaving program.
Even women with health insurance are falling behind in their mammograms. The American Cancer Society recommends annual tests for women 40 and older. Yet in 2003, just 55% of women in this group said they'd had a mammogram in the previous year.
Americans aren't doing any better when it comes to colorectal cancer screening. Only around 42% of adults 50 and older have gotten tested in the appropriate time frame. Insurance coverage is a major issue: only 17% of uninsured people have been tested, compared to 44% of those with health insurance.
Low colorectal cancer screening rates are a concern because unlike screening for many other cancers, colorectal cancer screening can find colon growths called polyps before they ever become cancerous, preventing the disease entirely. The report describes several ACS efforts to improve insurance coverage for colorectal cancer screening and public utilization of screening.
The battle of the bulge is another problem highlighted in the CPED report. About two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, and only a fraction of us get the exercise we need to help stave off weight gain or lose weight.
Turning back this tide is critical because about one-third of US cancer deaths are related to excess weight, poor nutrition, and lack of physical activity, the report notes. Being too heavy is clearly linked with many cancers, including cancer of the breast, colon, endometrium, esophagus, and kidney.
The CPED report says community efforts are needed to make our environment more conducive to good food and exercise choices. It calls for limits on junk food marketing in schools, encouraging more nutrition information in restaurants, stronger physical education requirements in schools, and more investment in parks, bike lanes, and sidewalks.
The report also calls for greater efforts to educate the public about sun safety -- staying out of the sun during peak hours, using sunscreen and protective clothing, and keeping to the shade. It says too many of us are getting sunburned, which can increase the risk of both melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers.
source : health.yahoo.com
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