Dataset of the Day: Breast Cancer Awareness Month

By emily sciarillo On October 12, 2009 · 1 Comment

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. According to the American Cancer Society, nearly one in eight women (12%) in the US will develop invasive breast cancer in their lifetime. Globaly it was the second most common cancer in incidence and death for women according to the World Health Organization. To increase awareness of and about breast cancer, I have created some maps to visualize some of the breast cancer data available.

The first map, based on data from the CDC looks at breast cancer rates (adjusted for age) in the US by state. For all races, Connecticut and Delaware have the highest rates and Arizona and Mississippi the lowest. Globally the USA has the highest breast cancer age-standardized rate of all countries.

The next map, based on data from the World Health Organization and provided by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, shows breast cancer age-standardized rates for 171 countries. This map clearly shows that developed countries have a higher incidence of breast cancer than developing countries, even when age is taken into account. This may be in part due to differences in family planning in developing countries where women have more children at an earlier age and generally breast feed more often and for longer. In a 2002 study, it was found that “women with breast cancer had had fewer births than controls (2.2 vs. 2.6), and a larger proportion of them had never given birth (16% vs. 14%)”. The study also found that “among women who had given birth, those with cancer were less likely than controls to have breastfed (71% vs. 79%) and reported a shorter average lifetime duration of breastfeeding (9.8 vs. 15.6 months)”.

To get a better idea of the range of breast cancer incidence among the developed countries, the maps below show them in a more detailed scale.

Although the US has the highest rate of breast cancer, it has the best five year survival rate in the world. The next map shows the five year survival numbers normalized by breast cancer cases. This map shows a very strong association between breast cancer survival and location. A womens’s chances of survival are very much dependent on which region in the world they live. Africa has the lowest five year breast cancer survival rates. Latin America also has low rates followed by India, China, the Middle East and South East Asia. Western Europe and Australia have higher rates than Eastern Europe and then finally Japan and North America have the highest five year survival. It should be noted that in the US, there is a racial gap with white patients more likely to survive than black patients.

Research, hormone treatment, and early diagnosis have played key roles in improving the likelihood of surviving breast cancer. The Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure is an event that anyone can take part in and raises substantial amount of money to support breast cancer research, education, screening and treatment. These races take place throughout the year all over the US as well as in a few international cities. This last map shows the locations of the Race for the Cure events around the world in 2009 and those that have been planned so far for 2010. You can click on the map to see it in Maker! and once in Maker! click on each location to see the details of the race.

If you are interested in seeing this data yourself, please download the spreadsheets from Finder! or you can make your own maps using the datasets in Maker!.