Blog assignment #11: magnitude of the topic of interest

The purpose of surveillance is not only to collect various data from the states (data collected by local states), but also to actively conduct a number of surveys to understand the status of American population's health better. In my topic's case, surveillance is used to assess the prevalence of lung cancer as a whole -- not only the population of American women--, to identify risk factors, and find the trends. Some public health agency actively go to the public, get some samples, and conduct examinations and tests. Further, surveillance could be used to assess the how the health-related behaviors such as smoking cigarettes and alcohol consumptions. There are two types of indicators: direct indicators and indirect indicators. In my case, direct indicators will be prevalence of women in the united states who got diagnosed with lung cancer and the increased number of lung cancer deaths in women. Because smoking is now commonly known to be the primary cause of lung cancer, indirect indicators will be increased number of female smokers, the number of cigarette purchases made by female customers. Of course, lung cancer can develop due to various factors such as genetic factors, hormones, and environmental factors, but according to cancer.com, "From 1991 to 2005, the number of new lung cancer diagnoses in women in the United States increased by 0.5% per year, while the number of new lung cancer diagnoses in men decreased by 1.8% per year. The number of male smokers has declined by about half over the last four decades; however, the number of women smokers has decreased by only 25%" From this piece of statistic, I think the increase number of women with lung cancer can be more attributed to smoking habits. I think the source of this data is pretty reliable since the website is run by American Society of Clinical Oncology. The American Cancer Society's most recent lung cancer statistics in the United States for 2009 include an estimated 116,900 men and 103,350 women will be diagnosed with lung cancer and an estimated 88,900 men and 70,490 women will die from lung cancer. This indicates that lung cancer tend to affect men more than women; this however does not mean that this statistic contradicts with the one above since its comparing the the prevalence of lung cancer in men vs. in women. This source is again reliable because its from the American Cancer society. Its weakness is that it does not show the "increase number of female smokers," it rather only compares the number of cases of lung cancer in men to women. National Cancer institute stated on their website that a new study reveals that incidence rates of lung cancer among people who have never smoked (never smokers) are higher in women than in men. Lung cancer incidence rates among female never smokers aged 40 to 79 ranged from 14.4 to 20.8 per 100,000 person-years, while incidence rates among male never smokers aged 40 to 79 ranged from 4.8 to 13.7 per 100,000 person-years. This is a reliable source as well because its by National cancer institute. Though it indicates that women are more prone to get lung cancer than men-- it only shows genetic factors or factors that can contribute to development of lung cancer, excluding the primary cause of lung cancer. This is also a weakness because it's missing out the biggest factor.