The new Cancer in Iowa Report aims to raise awareness about how the state needs to immediately start planning for the future to care for the quickly-rising number of cancer survivors.
Dr. Sarah Nash is research director of the Iowa Cancer Registry and an epidemiology professor at the University of Iowa. Nash says more than 21,000 Iowans will be diagnosed with cancer this year, and as survival rates rise, there needs to be an increase in healthcare professionals to handle their unique needs.
“They may include screening for cancer recurrence, so, their cancer could come back and we need to make sure that we’re watching for that. Addressing late effects and delayed symptoms, so maybe they have delayed symptoms of their cancer treatments,” Nash says. “And we need to make sure that those folks have high quality of life through nutrition, physical activity, tobacco use cessation, and other mental health and support services.”
Nash says Iowa has the second-highest cancer rate in the country, behind only Kentucky, and Iowa has the fastest-rising rate of new cancer cases. The report says 171,000 Iowans are now considered cancer survivors, or about one in every 20 Iowans, and they’ll need long-term medical attention.
“These needs can really change over time. So, somebody who has just been diagnosed may have very different needs than somebody who was diagnosed 10 years ago,” Nash says. “It’s a really large span of things that we need to be considering when we’re considering the support services that we need to be providing to cancer survivors.”
Nash says this edition of the annual Cancer in Iowa Report lays out projections for cancer incidence during 2025.
“We estimate that there will be 21,200 new cancer cases diagnosed among Iowans this year, that’s an increase of 200 from last year,” Nash says. “We know that breast, prostate, lung and colorectal cancers continue to make up roughly half of all our cancer cases.”
The Iowa Cancer Registry has tracked cancer cases, survival rates, and deaths from cancer in the state since 1973. Last year’s report showed Iowa’s cancer mortality rate would fall by 100 cases, but this year’s projected rate of deaths rose.
“We estimate that there will be about 6,300 cancer deaths among Iowans, which is again an increase of 200 from last year,” she says. “Lung cancer continues to be the most common cause of cancer deaths in Iowa, accounting for about one out of every four cancer deaths.”
The report allows doctors and researchers to focus on how to prevent and treat cancer, she says, and it provides Iowans with the knowledge they need to get advance screening and improve survival rates across the board.