disparities and highlight some important distinctions between the incident and prevalent populations that have policy implications, for example, different age distributions that affect health insurance coverage.

Breast cancer is the most common invasive cancer among women in the United States, and 211,240 new cases will be diagnosed in 2005 (ACS, 2005a). There is a one in seven probability for women to develop breast cancer in their lifetime (ACS, 2005a). The incidence of breast cancer among women increased on average 0.5 percent per year during the period 1987 to 2001, while mortality declined an average of 2.3 percent per year during the period 1990 to 2001 (Jemal et al., 2004; Ries et al., 2004). This has resulted in a 12.8 percent increase in 5-year survival (from 74.9 percent in 1975–1979 to 87.7 percent in 1995–2000) (Figure 2-20). In 2005 the number of deaths from breast cancer is expected to be 40,410.

FIGURE 2-20 Trends in breast cancer incidence, mortality, and survival. Five-year relative survival is reported as an average for diagnosis years 1975–1979 and 1980–1984.

SOURCE: Ries et al. (2005).