An Ounce of Prevention Saves You A Whole Lot Of Cancer

TLDR: The big take home in their own words: "In 2019, an estimated 40.0% (713,340 of 1,781,649) of all incident cancers (excluding nonmelanoma skin cancers) and 44.0% (262,120 of 595,737) of all cancer deaths in adults aged 30 years and older in the United States were attributable to the evaluated risk factors"

This is a 2024 study that 'used nationally representative data on cancer incidence and mortality and risk factor prevalence to estimate the proportion and number of cancer cases and deaths attributable to potentially modifiable risk factors.' In layman's terms they used data from a ton of studies to estimate how many cancers in the US were due to a factor that you could change. The idea being if you change the risk factor, you avoid the cancer.

Interestingly they had access to 2020 cancer data but opted to use the 2019 data. This was because decreased cancer screening programs and reduced medical visits due to the COVID 19 pandemic likely would have altered or distort the cancer diagnosis data, reducing the number of cancers caught. 

The study goes on further to then rank individual cancers by how much they are driven by a factor you can change. In the figure below the PAF% means the "Population Attributable Fraction" that is the the proportion of cancer attributable to risk factors in the population. that is, for Anal cancer, 94.2% of anal cancers are attributed to something you can avoid.

LINK TO STUDY PDF

Islami F, Marlow EC, Thomson B, et al. Proportion and number of cancer cases and deaths attributable to potentially modifiable risk factors in the United States, 2019. CA Cancer J Clin. 2024; 1-28. doi:10.3322/caac.21858