December 22, 2005 - The National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, today released Cancer Trends Progress Report: 2005 Update. The report summarizes our nation's progress against cancer in relation to the Healthy People 2010 targets developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Major conclusions include positive progress and areas where we're losing ground in the war on cancer. The nation is making progress toward major cancer-related Healthy People 2010 targets:
* Death rates for the four most common cancers (prostate, breast, lung, and colorectal), as well as for all cancers combined, continue to decline.
* The rate of cancer incidence has been relatively stable since the mid 1990s.

* Some prevention behaviors have shown improvement. Adult smoking is down dramatically since the 1960s, although rates fell only slightly in the 1990s. Alcohol and fat consumption are headed down, while fruit and vegetable consumption is up only slightly since about 1990.
* Youth smoking was on the rise during much of the 1990s, but has shown declines since 1997.
* The use of screening tests for breast and cervical cancers is high and remained stable between 2000 and 2003. Screening for colorectal cancer remains low, despite its proven effectiveness, though use is increasing.
* People are doing slightly more to protect themselves from the sun.

The nation is losing ground in other important areas that demand attention:
* The incidence of cancers of the breast in women and of prostate and testis in men, as well as leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, myeloma, melanoma of skin, and cancers of the thyroid, kidney, and esophagus is rising.
* Lung cancer death rates in women continue to rise, but not as rapidly as before.
* More people are overweight and obese, and leisure time physical activity is increasing only slightly.
* Cancer treatment spending continues to rise along with total health care spending.
* Unexplained cancer-related health disparities remain among population subgroups. For example, Blacks and people with low socioeconomic status have the highest rates of both new cancers and cancer deaths.

The online report, first issued in 2001 as the Cancer Progress Report, is released every other year. The revised and expanded report is intended for policy makers, researchers, clinicians, and public health service providers, offering updated national trends data and a variety of new features.
New additions to this year's report include:
*\tQuick tutorial to make navigation and downloading of materials within the report as simple as possible

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