Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

"Florida leads the nation in deaths from lightning strikes. But State Farm, one of the nation’s major insurers, says it is Georgia residents who file the most claims for lightning strikes in the country, WSB-TV reported Friday, June 5. PolitiFact Georgia was intrigued and decided to dig a little deeper. We began by contacting Justin Tomczak, a State Farm spokesman. He sent us data showing Georgia was No. 1 in 2014 for lightning-related claims both in number (3,709) and total dollar value ($16.3 million). Texas was second, Alabama at third, Louisiana at fourth and Illinois at fifth. STATE Reported Count Paid Indemnity  Georgia 3,709 $16,301,952 Texas 2,201 $14,160,258 Alabama 1,902 $10,930,264 Louisiana 1,707 $10,930,264 Illinois 1,669 $8,030,507 . ""This is the third year in a row that Georgia has been ranked No. 1,"" Tomczak said. Most of the lightning claims were surge- or power-related, the spokesman said. Damages generally resulted from power surges in electrical wiring, TV cable or phone lines in homes or businesses, he said. As to why Georgia has the most claims, Tomczak said, ""there is no simple answer. However, many of the lightning claims are concentrated in the Southeastern United States, and Georgia has one of the highest populations in this area."" John Jensenius, lightning safety specialist with the National Weather Service, said the population density in metro Atlanta may be a factor in Georgia’s high claim rate. The denser the population the more likely lightning will strike a house, Jensenius said. The Insurance Information Institute, in conjunction with State Farm, compiles a list each year of the top 10 states for homeowners insurance lightning losses by number of claims. In 2013, the institute listed Georgia as highest with 11,184 lightning-related insurance claims from homeowners. Its 2014 report is due out within days, a spokeswoman said. (Georgia was No. 1 for 2012 with 3,844 claims totalling $21.5 million and for 2013 with 2,969 claims totalling $14.9 million, according to State Farm). Nationwide, lightning strikes cost about $674 million in homeowners insurance losses in 2013, down 30.5 percent from 2012, according to the institute. From 2007 to 2011, local fire departments across the country responded to an average of 22,600 fires a year that were started by lightning, according to the National Fire Protection Association. These fires caused an average of $451 million in direct property damage and nine civilian deaths a year, an NFPA analysis shows. Lightning deaths  Florida led the nation for lightning deaths in 2014 with six, followed by Wisconsin with three. Georgia, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado and Massachusetts each had two deaths. Seven additional states -- California, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Texas -- reported one lightning death in the year. The 26 lightning deaths in 2014 followed a record low of 23 set in 2013. The National Weather Service said deaths from lightning strikes averaged 33 a year from 2004 to 2013 and, going back over the last 30 years, an average of 51 people died each year after being hit by lightning. The significant decline in lightning deaths has been attributed to fewer farmers working in the fields, technological advances, improved safety standards and protection. As of the June 1, 2015 there have been six lightning fatalities, two in North Carolina and one each in Iowa, Florida, New Mexico and West Virginia, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). WSB-TV meteorologist Brian Monahan said lightning strikes occur most often in Georgia during the summer months when the high pressure area out in the Atlantic around Bermuda pumps in warm, humid air, creating those all-too-familiar afternoon and evening thunderstorms. A secondary spike of lightning strikes also occurs in the severe weather seasons of March to early May and around October and November, when the air is still warm and humid enough to support storms, Monahan said. Our ruling State Farm says Georgia residents file the most claims for lightning strikes in the country. There’s evidence this has been the case last year and the two previous years."
Georgia residents file the most insurance claims for lightning strikes in the country.

There are four slashes among the women’s siblings, others among her immediate family, and most family members’ symbols are partially colored in. Each partially filled circle represents a cancer diagnosis. Each slash indicates a death. Although white women get breast cancer more frequently, it’s usually diagnosed later and is more severe in African American women. Breast cancer death rates among black women were about 40 percent higher than among white women between 1999 and 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Ricks-Santi, director of the Hampton University Cancer Research Center, and another Hampton colleague, John McDonald, recently received a $446,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the genetics behind breast cancer diagnoses in African American women. In particular, they’re trying to refine genetic tests that don’t seem to be as effective for black women as white. “I wanted to make sure that there was equity in the way that genetics and genomics was being applied across populations,” Ricks-Santi said. She has a longstanding interest in cancer research, dating back to when she was a kid. Her family has a history of cancer; her father has prostate cancer. That led her to pursue an undergraduate degree at Hampton University and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University. She worked as a post-doctoral fellow in a joint cancer studies program between Georgetown and Howard University. There, she saw a trend among genetic tests for breast cancer, particularly the most common ones, BRCA 1 and 2. They are sometimes an indicator for some of the hardest to treat forms, and they’re also correlated with other kinds of cancer in men and women. At Georgetown’s cancer center, which Ricks-Santi said served mostly white and affluent patients, BRCA tests often helped doctors decide if women were candidates for preventative treatment or if they needed additional testing. At Howard’s cancer center, which served more black patients, BRCA tests often came back inconclusive. This, Ricks-Santi said, makes it hard for oncologists to come up with specific, informed approaches for patients of color. “You can’t do that if you’re not identifying the right risk factor, the right gene,” said Melissa Gomes, a mental health nurse practitioner and a co-investigator on the study. “You can’t make that personalized approach if it wasn’t based on a population that included you.” The study that Ricks-Santi and McDonald are leading uses family history and genetic data from 300 breast cancer patients at Howard, along with relatives without cancer diagnoses and other types of cancer. Ricks-Santi will conduct statistical research to find candidate genes that could provide a better test. McDonald, an assistant professor of physics, will then conduct the laboratory phase of the study, injecting those genes into cancer cells in Petri dishes to determine exactly what kind of effect those have. They’re also working with Hampton University students on the project, who will be paid with grant money. “It’s nice to create that pipeline of researchers that look like the population we want to study,” Gomes said. This round of funding lasts for three years. But they’re already looking toward the next phase. That’s where Gomes’ experience comes in, whose background is clinical psychiatry. She sees patients four days a week. In a second study, once they’ve isolated some possible genes, they want to control for those genes and then investigate social circumstances that might contribute to breast and other kinds of cancer. Gomes hopes to use her background in psychiatry and patient care to help build connections in Hampton Roads in addition to helping with the social research. “Nurses are considered one of the most trusted health professionals,” Gomes said. “I think that the community trusts us and they value their opinion.” Ricks-Santi is hopeful about this holistic approach, citing her father’s own experience. Because of the small size of his tumor, they took a more wait-and-see approach to treatment. He moved to Puerto Rico for six months to relax. It seemed to work. His prostate-specific antigen levels, an indicator of that kind of cancer, dropped significantly and have stayed stable. “It’s scary and exciting,” Ricks-Santi said. “There’s so many possibilities.” ___ Information from: Daily Press, http://www.dailypress.com/
University studies cancer risk and testing for black women.

At issue are genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2. When they’re mutated, the body can’t repair damaged DNA as well, greatly increasing the chances of breast, ovarian and certain other cancers. Gene testing allows affected women to consider steps to lower their risk, such as when actress Angelina Jolie underwent a preventive mastectomy several years ago. Most cancer isn’t caused by BRCA mutations — they account for 5% to 10% of breast cancers and 15% of ovarian cancers — so the gene tests aren’t for everyone. But mutations cluster in families, and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has long recommended that doctors screen women who have relatives with BRCA-related cancers and refer those who might benefit from gene testing to a genetic counselor to help them decide. Tuesday, the task force expanded that advice, telling primary care doctors they should also assess women’s risk if: —they previously were treated for breast or other BRCA-related cancers including ovarian, fallopian tube or peritoneal cancers, and now are considered cancer-free. —their ancestry is prone to BRCA mutations, such as Ashkenazi Jewish women. Why screen breast cancer survivors? After all, they already know there’s a risk of recurrence. Take, for example, someone who had a tumor removed in one breast in their 40s a decade ago, when genetic testing wasn’t as common. Even this many years later, a BRCA test still could reveal if they’re at risk for ovarian cancer — or at higher than usual risk for another tumor in their remaining breast tissue, explained task force member Dr. Carol Mangione of the University of California, Los Angeles. And it could alert their daughters or other relatives to a potential shared risk. “It’s important to test those people now,” Mangione said. “We need to get the word out to primary care doctors to do this assessment and to make the referrals.” Private insurers follow task force recommendations on what preventive care to cover, some at no out-of-pocket cost under rules from former President Barack Obama’s health care law. The recommendations were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Cancer groups have similar recommendations for BRCA testing, and increasingly urge that the newly diagnosed be tested, too, because the inherited risk can impact choices about surgery and other treatment. Identifying BRCA mutation carriers “can be lifesaving, and should be a part of routine medical care,” Drs. Susan Domchek of the University of Pennsylvania and Mark Robson of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who weren’t involved with the new guidelines, wrote in an editorial accompanying them. But too few high-risk women ever learn if they harbor BRCA mutations, they wrote. For example, cancer groups have long recommended that all ovarian cancer patients be tested, but several studies have found testing is done in less than a third. Don’t skip the genetic counseling, said the task force’s Mangione. BRCA testing can cause anxiety and sometimes gives confusing results, finding mutations that might not be dangerous — things the counselors are trained to interpret. There’s a shortage of genetic counselors, particularly in rural areas, and she said counseling by phone can work. There’s a wide array of gene tests, some that search just for BRCA mutations and others that test dozens of additional genes at the same time. There’s even a direct-to-consumer kit sold by 23andMe — but Domchek and Robson warned it only detects the three mutations found most in women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, not dozens of other mutations. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Guidelines say more women may need breast cancer gene test.