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New York State Cancer Incidence by Census Tract, 2010 - 2014

New York State Department of Health. 2017. "Cancer Incidence by Census Tract." Accessed 17 June 2019. https://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/cancer/registry/tract/index.htm.

The census tract lists show the number of people who developed the specific type of cancer while living in the census tract area between 2010 and 2014. The lists also show the number of people who might have been expected to get cancer in that time period, based on the size and age distribution of the population of the census tract.

Incidence data are provisional, March 2017.

New York State Cancer Registry: Under the New York State Public Health Law, all individuals diagnosed with cancer in New York State must be reported to the New York State Cancer Registry. The Cancer Registry routinely audits hospitals, laboratories and other health care providers to ensure that all required reports are made. The Cancer Registry also has reporting agreements with most other states, including all of the states that border New York. Through these agreements, New York State residents who are diagnosed at hospitals or by health care providers in other states are also reported to the Cancer Registry. The North American Association of Central Cancer Registries has recognized the New York State Cancer Registry as meeting the highest standard for completeness of reporting.

Generally an individual is not reported to the Cancer Registry until they are discharged from the hospital. Under State law, the hospital or other health care provider has 180 days after diagnosis to report to the Cancer Registry. The North American Association of Central Cancer Registries has recognized the New York State Cancer Registry as meeting the highest standard for the timeliness of reporting.

Actual vs Expected Counts: Some census tracts have more people living in them than others, though most are around 4,000 people. Because of this, we cannot just compare the number of people diagnosed with cancer in each census tract. Generally speaking, census tracts with more people living in them will have more people with cancer. Those with fewer people will have fewer people with cancer. Also, because cancer is more common in older people, the age of the people who live in a census tract is important. Census tracts where older people live will have more cancer than neighborhoods where younger people live.

Expected incidence is the number of people in a given census tract that would be expected to develop cancer within a five-year period if the census tract had the same rate of cancer as the State as a whole. The cancer rate for the entire state and the number of people in a census tract are used to estimate the expected incidence. Age and population size are also taken into account because you would expect to see more people develop cancer in a census tract with a larger population or a higher percentage of older residents. This process is called age adjustment.

Included Census Tracts: Some census tracts had too few cases to be shown for confidentiality reasons. These census tracts are combined with neighboring census tracts. In the index, these census tracts are listed with the census tract with which they were combined. The numerical values given are for the combined group of census tracts.

Fields

Census tracts are defined based on 2010 census definition, with geometries from the 2010 cartographic boundary file.

US Census Bureau. 2011. "Cartographic Boundary Files - Shapefile." Accessed 18 June 2019. https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/carto-boundary-file.2010.html.