American Cancer Society report details cancer prevention efforts

Early Detection

• Only 51.2% of women aged 40 and older reported having a mammogram within the past year. The American Cancer Society recommends annual mammograms for women starting at age 40.
• Mammography rates appear to be stable or slightly declining after increasing for over a decade. In 2005, 66.5% of women reported having a mammogram in the past 2 years, which was 4 percentage points lower than 2000 levels.
• The lowest prevalence of mammography use occurred among women who lack health insurance, followed by immigrant women who have lived in the US for less than 10 years.
• Although utilization is improving, colorectal cancer screening prevalence continues to lag behind use of other cancer screening tests. Between 2000 and 2005, the use of colorectal cancer screening among U.S. adults aged 50 and older increased from 42.5% to 46.8%.
• Hispanics, immigrants who had been in the U.S. for less than 10 years, and the uninsured were the least likely to have had a colorectal cancer screening test.

Obesity and Overweight

• Approximately two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese; the rise in obesity appears to have leveled-off between 2003-2004 and 2005-2006, with 34% of men and 36.4% of women meeting the criteria for obesity in 2005-2006.
• In the past 20 years, overweight prevalence among U.S. adolescents aged 12 to 19 more than tripled, from 5% to 17.1%. Increases have occurred across race, ethnicity, and gender
• In 2006, the prevalence of obesity across states ranged from 18.3% in Colorado to 31.5% in Mississippi.

Nutrition and Physical Activity

• In 2005, 35.8% of U.S. youth were physically active for at least 60 minutes on more than five days per week, and 33% attended physical education classes daily.
• In 2005, 37.2% of U.S. high school students reported watching three or more hours of television per day.
• About one in five (20.1%) U.S. high school students ate vegetables and fruits five or more times per day in 2005.
• Only 24.3% of adults reported eating five or more servings of vegetables and fruit daily in 2005. Across states, prevalence of consuming five or more servings of vegetables and fruit ranged from 15.7% in Oklahoma to 32.2% in the District of Columbia.
• In 2006, 23.9% of adults reported no leisure-time physical activity. The percentage of adults reporting no leisure-time physical activity ranged from 14.2% in Minnesota to 31.2% in Mississippi.

UV radiation and protection behaviors