This coming Father s Day serves as a reminder to raise awareness about the importance of prevention and early detection of health problems affecting men. Bernard Malone, director of the Division of Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion for the Missouri Department of Health, noted that despite advances in medical science over the past decades, the basic fact remains that women outlive men, on average, by seven years.
Cancer affects men at a higher rate than women, both in incidence and in deaths.
The gender difference is especially pronounced for several cancers that are preventable or successfully treated when diagnosed early. Lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer deaths, has been steadily increasing in incidence and prevalence among women in the last twenty years, however, incidence and death rates for lung cancer in males are still more than twice that for females. While the risk for colorectal cancer is even between the sexes, incidence and deaths from this cancer occur one-third times more often in men. Melanoma skin cancer occurs in men at a rate 1 times that for women with a death rate twice that for women. For prostate cancer, which is the second leading cause of cancer-related death in men, the occurrence increases with age, primarily striking men over age 65.