Data Sources

Incidence Data
The primary source of data on cancer incidence is medical records. Staff at health care facilities abstract data from patients’ medical records, enter it into the facility’s own cancer registry if it has one, and then send the data to the regional or state registry.

Mortality Data
Cancer mortality statistics are based on information from all death certificates filed in the 50 states and the District of Columbia and processed by the National Vital Statistics System.

Population Denominator Data
The population estimates for the denominators of incidence and death rates are race-specific, ethnicity-specific, and sex-specific county population estimates aggregated to the state or metropolitan-area level.

Population estimates for the denominators of incidence and death rates for Puerto Rico are sex-specific population estimates from the 2010 U.S. Census and are not available by race or ethnicity.