Cancer Death Rate Drops to Lowest in 30 Years: Here's Where Florida's Stands

The American Cancer Society had some encouraging news after a new report revealed that the risk of dying from cancer in the U.S. has dropped 32 percent in the last 28 years.

Dr. Estelamari Rodriguez is a lung cancer expert at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Health System, and said that factors such as early detection, treatments and new technologies contributed to the decline.

"That means over the last three decades at least today we have 3.5 million less deaths," said Rodriguez. "That is a significant amount of people that have not died from cancer and we can celebrate that."

And when it comes to Florida, Rodriguez said the number of cancer patients is sky high.

"Florida has the second largest burden of cancer in the U.S. and in Florida lung cancer rates are going down, but they are still very high," Rodriguez said.

The doctor added that these figures are in large part due to Florida's older population. Rodriguez also said that breast cancer rates are also still rising in our state, but less women are dying from it.

And when it comes to children and young adults with cancer, children have really benefited from new technology.

Although cancer death rates have dropped 60 to 70 percent since the 1970s, there is still much work to be done.

Despite the decrease in cancer-related deaths, racial disparities still exist as cancer survival rates are lower for the Black community for almost every cancer type.

In fact, if we look at breast cancer, which is the most common cancer death for women, Black women are 41 percent more likely to die than white women and Black men are two to four times more likely to die from prostate cancer than white men.

Racial, ethnic and socioeconomic disparities have long been an issue keeping people from accessing quality health care and prevention.

While the cancer death rates are improving, it is really about preventing diseases altogether.