Cancer incidence and rural surveillance challenges in West Texas

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to report cancer incidence across West Texas, with a focus on differences in urban and rural counties.

Methods: Aggregate population data was obtained from the Texas Cancer Registry and the United States Census to describe cancer incidence and population size for 107 counties across West Texas. Five-year cancer incidence reports were used to calculate annual mean cancer incidence to retain as much data as possible from low population rural counties.

Findings: An average of 13,500 new cancer diagnoses were reported across West Texas annually from 2018–2022. Over two-thirds of these new cases occurred among residents in the nine urban counties in the region, leaving about 4,150 new cases across the geographically large and sparsely populated 98 rural counties of West Texas.

Conclusions: West Texas cancer incidence aligns proportionally with the state of Texas when accounting for population size. However, a substantial challenge remains for rural cancer epidemiology for identifying meaningful patterns when annual absolute incidence numbers are too small for statistical analysis.

Keywords: Cancer incidence, rural health, West Texas, population health