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IOM REPORT: BEHAVIOR CHANGES COULD CUT CANCER DEATHS
Greater efforts to help people
quit smoking, lose weight and change other unhealthy behaviors could lead
to a 29 percent decline in U.S. cancer rates by 2015, according to a report
released by the Institute of Medicine on March 10. Behavior changes, along with expanded screening efforts, could prevent almost 100,000 new cancer cases and 60,000 cancer deaths each year. With changes in risky health behaviors, the number of lung cancer cases could be cut in half and the number of colon cancers cut by a third, the report suggests. The power of prevention is not a new concept in cancer studies, but the time is ripe to devote more resources toward prevention research and practices, according to the IOM report authors. “Although personal experience illustrates for most people the great difficulty in achieving sustained behavioral change, Americans have made substantial improvements in their health habits in the past few decades,” they write. “What’s new here is the growing body of evidence confirming that interventions that get people to change their behaviors do work,” added report co-author Susan J. Curry, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Chicago. The report recommends that private and public insurers cover evidence-based cancer prevention and detection services, including nicotine replacement therapy, breast cancer screening for women 50 and older, cervical cancer screening for all sexually active women and colorectal screening for all adults 50 and older. The report also recommends raising tobacco taxes, calling them “the single most effective method for reducing the demand for tobacco.” Resources devoted to studying risky behaviors and implementing cancer prevention techniques could also benefit cardiovascular disease and diabetes, especially among the racial and ethnic minority groups who bear a disproportionate burden of these diseases, the study concludes. To read the full IOM report online, go to http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10263.html?onpi_newbooks_031403.
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