SEER program. For example, the cancer incidence rate reported for Kentucky, a state that does not participate in the SEER program and that has a large, rural white population and a high prevalence of poverty (19.0 percent versus a 13.7 percent rate of poverty nationally), suggests that overall rates of cancer in Kentucky are somewhat higher than estimates of the rates for the U.S. population as a whole (see Table 2-11). Specifically, the incidences of colorectal, lung, and cervical cancer are higher among the population in Kentucky than among the non-Hispanic white rate U.S. population, according to SEER program data. Of additional concern is the increasing cancer incidence trend suggested by the data for Kentucky. This is in contrast to the decrease in cancer incidence noted nationally among non-Hispanic whites for the same time period according to SEER program data.

The American Cancer Society, SEER, NCHS, and CDC combined efforts to produce a report card covering over 20 years of cancer experience in the United States, Cancer Incidence and Mortality, 1973–1995: A Report Card for the United States (Wingo et al., 1998), using data drawn from SEER and NCHS databases. Rates of cancer for several ethnic minority groups (African Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics) were included. However, cancer rates for Native Americans were notably absent. Also notably absent from this report were survival rates.

The report card confirmed the disparate cancer burdens among members of different ethnic minority groups, illustrated by SEER program data from 1988 to 1992. Additionally, data from this coordinated effort suggested an increasing trend in the incidence of and mortality from all major cancers among Asians and Pacific Islanders, but statistical significance was