Determining Cancer Mortality in Latino Populations by Birthplace and Generation

In a recent editorial, registry data hold unique opportunities for linkages that will accurately characterize racial-ethnic groups in the U.S.

In a recent editorial in the Journal of National Cancer Institute, Associate Professor Paulo Pinheiro at the University of Miami comments on the most recent manuscript in cancer in Latinos in the Multi-Ethnic Cohort (MEC) by Professor Wendy Setiawan of The University of Southern California. His editorial underscores the importance of the role of population-based cancer registry data in cancer research and cancer health disparity research.

Highlights

First, as results from the MEC show, cohort studies are not always representative of race-ethnicity on a population basis. In other words, there is no replacement for cancer registry data, the only truly population-based source of data to characterize race-ethnicity in the U.S. Second, there is no approximation of cancer mortality rates to those of non-Hispanic Whites with an increasing generation of U.S.-born Mexicans, which somewhat contradicts prevailing theories of acculturation and cancer. In this context, registry data hold unique opportunities for linkages that will accurately characterize racial-ethnic groups in the U.S.