Cancer Rates Drop Among Blacks, But Remain High

     Cancer rates among African Americans dropped in recent years, reversing long-term trends, but the rates remain higher than among whites, according to a report recently released by the American Cancer Society (ACS).
     This report is part of a ACS report indicating that the number of Americans dying of cancer declined for second year in a row, this time by a much greater number, the American Cancer Society reports, a signal that decades of advances in prevention and treatment are paying off, experts say.
     "There are some promising trends regarding cancer for African Americans, but there are still areas in which a lot of work remains to be done," says Robert Greenlee, Ph.D., M.P.H., program director of cancer surveillance for the ACS.
      The rate of newly diagnosed cancer cases among African Americans dropped between 1993 and 1997, reversing a 20-year trend; and death rates from cancer in African Americans fell between 1991 and 1997, a reversal of a 30-year trend. The data from 1997 is the most recent available.
      Despite these gains, African-American men still develop cancer 27 percent more frequently than white men, and their death rates from all cancers combined are still 45 percent higher than those among white men.
Among African-American women, death from cancer is 22 percent more common than among white women.

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