Florida has the second highest cancer incidence in the United States. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in Florida as well as the United States.

In Florida, 96,719 people were diagnosed with cancer and 38,835 people died from cancer in 2001. The lifetime probability of developing cancer is now estimated at 1 in 3. Nearly one out of every four deaths (23.2%) in Florida was due to cancer.

Cancer-related hospitalization days decreased substantially from approximately 761,000 in 1990 to approximately 601,000 in 2001 in Florida. However, the price tag for cancer-related hospitalizations increased in the same time span from $2.3 billion (C$) to $2.6 billion.

Daily hospital charges are expressed in constant dollars (C$) in order to eliminate the effects of inflation. The average cost per day increased from $3,198 (C$) per day in 1990 to $5,224 per day in 2001.

What Is Risk Of Cancer?

Risk is a person's chance of getting cancer over a certain period of time. There are many different ways to present risk. Risk is estimated with developing cancer in your lifetime compared to an average person who's your same age and sex.

Calculations based on all the factors have been scientifically proven to be related to the risk of cancer. Based on how you answer questions, these are compared to how your specific set of risk factors compare to that of a typical person who's your same age and sex.

Risk is only an estimate, and calculating an individual's risk of disease is an inexact science. However, given what's known to date, cancer risk provides a solid estimate. Even more importantly, it highlights steps you can take to lower it.

What Is Cancer Prevention?

When you hear the word prevention today it refers mainly to lowering the risk of cancer. This is largely because the most common diseases in developed nations today are chronic disease -- like heart disease and cancer.

Chronic diseases tend to be caused by a combination of many different factors, some of which are under a person's control (like diet), some of which are out of person's control (like age), and some of which are still unknown. With so many factors driving risk -- only a portion of which can actually be changed -- the realistic goal of prevention becomes lowering the risk of disease, not eliminating it.

So although the risk of most chronic diseases can't be totally eliminated, it can still be significantly reduced. If everyone in Florida led a healthy lifestyle, 80 percent of the cases of heart disease and diabetes could be avoided, as could 70 percent of the cases of stroke and over 50 percent of all cases of cancer.

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