4 Quick Takeaways from American Cancer Society’s Annual Cancer Statistics Report

The American Cancer Society published its annual statistical report today, both as an article in its journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians and as an 88-page, standalone report for a general audience, 2024 Cancer Facts and Figures.

The standalone report has a special section devoted to cancer among people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer or gender-nonconforming.

Here are four quick takeaways from both reports:

• 611,720 cancer deaths are projected to occur in the United States this year, which works out to about 1,680 deaths per day. However, cancer mortality has continued to decline from the early 1990s because of decreases in smoking, earlier detection and improved treatment.
• Colorectal cancer was the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in both men and women younger than 50 in the late 1990s but it is now first among men ad second among women
• Just over 2 million (2,001 140) new cases of cancer will be diagnosed this year, or about 5,480 diagnoses per day. Incidence rates for 6 of the 10 most common cancers are increasing.
• Wide disparities exist between White and Black cancer mortality rates. Mortality rates are twice as high for prostate, stomach and uterine corpus cancers in Black people than they are among White people.