Changes could help lower cancer rates

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A sobering new report about cancer diagnoses and mortality rates in New Jersey should serve as a reminder of the need for certain public health policy changes in Trenton and lifestyle changes that individuals ought to adopt if they want to lessen their risk of becoming another cancer statistic.

The report from the American Cancer Society New York and New Jersey chapter looks specifically at New Jersey. What it shows is that New Jerseyans, particularly South Jerseyans, are being diagnosed with various forms of cancer at rate higher than the national average.

Some of the findings:

• The U.S. average for incidence of cancer among males is 541 per 100,000 of population. In New Jersey, the incidence rate for males is 584.7.

• The U.S. average for incidence of cancer among females is 411.6 per 100,000 of population. In New Jersey, the incidence rate for females is 447.8.

• The incidence rate among both men and women in New Jersey is higher than the national rates for colorectal, breast, lung and prostate cancer, among others. These four cancers account for more than half of all diagnoses and almost half of all cancer deaths.

• Cape May County had the highest cancer incidence rate above the statewide rate — 15 percent higher — between 2004 and 2008. Other counties with significantly higher cancer incidence rates than the state average are: Gloucester, 7 percent higher; Camden, Burlington and Ocean, all 6 percent higher; and Atlantic County, 5 percent higher.

These numbers really should be a wake up call for New Jerseyans and for those who set the public health agenda in Trenton.

One area that merits immediate attention, and where the money exists to do something, is with lung cancer — that means foremost driving down smoking rates.

New Jersey collects about $1 billion a year in revenue from its high tax on tobacco and from the 1998 settlement with the big tobacco companies as compensation for Medicaid-related health care costs attributable to tobacco.

Yet it spends next to nothing — $1.5 million in the 2012 state budget — on programs to help smokers quit and to encourage people not to smoke. On the flip side, New Jersey spends more than $3 billion a year on medical care related to smoking, including just under $1 billion in Medicaid payments alone.