The death rate from cancer in the U.S. is down 22 percent from its peak in 1991, translating into more than 1.5 million avoided deaths from 1991 to 2011, according to a report from the American Cancer Society.
The amount of decrease of cancer deaths varied state to state, and was lowest in the South and highest in the Northeast. This could be due to different risk factors in different regions, like smoking and obesity, and the uneven distribution of poverty and access to care across the nation.
While the drop is encouraging, cancer was still responsible for nearly one in four deaths in the U.S. in 2011, and is expected to take over heart disease as the leading cause of death in America soon, according to John Seffrin, PhD, CEO of the American Cancer Society.
"The change may be inevitable, but we can still lessen cancer's deadly impact by making sure as many Americans as possible have access to the best tools to prevent, detect and treat cancer," he said in a statement.
In 2015, researchers project 1,658,370 new cancer cases and 589,430 deaths from cancer.