According to the “To Your Health” January 2018 report from the American Cancer Society (ACS), the US’ “overall cancer death rate declined 1.7 percent in last year on record 2015.” The data indicate that “overall, the cancer death rate has dropped from 215.1 per 100,000 population in 1991 to 158.6 per 100,000 in 2015.”

This means that according to CNN  “More than 2.3 million people have not died of cancer since 1991 who otherwise would have if cancer rates had remained unchanged… said” the ACS.

TIME (1/4, Park) remarks that  “One of the biggest forces behind the decline is a reduction in smoking, thanks to public health campaigns warning of its dangers, and tobacco taxes that discourage people from picking up the habit.” Although lung cancer, for instance, “remains a leading cause of cancer death, death rates have dropped by 45% among men from 1990 to 2015 and by 19% among women from 2002 to 2015.”

HealthDay (1/4, Gordon) reports, “During the past 10 years, cancer death rates in men” declined by approximately “2 percent per year, but they remained steady in women.” Additionally, the investigators “found a persistent gap between cancer death rates between whites and blacks.” The data indicated “in 2015, the cancer death rate was 14 percent higher in black people than in white people.” The findings were published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians

Source: Cancer statistics, 2018 – Siegel – 2018 – CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians – Wiley Online Library