Childhood Cancer Awareness Month: California Kids and Cancer
As we mark Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, it’s important to remember that cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease for children under the age of 15, even as medical advances have improved cancer treatment.
It’s estimated that more than 1,100 children ages 0-14 are diagnosed with cancer each year in California. Youth ages 15-19 generally have higher rates of cancer diagnoses than children up to 14.
White children tend to have the highest rate of cancer diagnoses among all ethnic groups with available data, but they also have higher survival rates than African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Latino children once diagnosed.
Fortunately, most children diagnosed with cancer survive into adulthood. In particular, rates of survival for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer, improved between 1990 and 2005.
For more information about cancer in California children, see these measures on kidsdata.org:
Net Five-Year Cancer Survival Rate, by Type of Cancer
Posted by Amy Lam
This entry was posted on Monday, September 16th, 2013 at 9:17 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.