Cancer Risk ID”d for Asian American, NHPI Population

TUESDAY, Sept. 1, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Considerable differences are seen in the incidence of cancers among Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) people, according to a study published online Aug. 27 in Cancer.

Nikita Sandeep Wagle, Ph.D., M.B.B.S., from the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, and colleagues used population‐based cancer registry data from the National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program from 2000 through 2022 to report incidence and survival for eight Asian American and three NHPI ethnic groups.

The researchers observed variation in overall cancer incidence, from 218.3 per 100,000 Kampuchean people to 474.5 per 100,000 Native Hawaiian people during 2018 to 2022, which was 1.5 times higher than the rate for the aggregated Asian American and NHPI population (307.3 per 100,000). The highest rates of female breast, colorectal, and prostate cancers were the main drivers of high incidence among Native Hawaiian people, while infection-related cancers were highest among Asian American ethnic groups. Compared with aggregated Asian American and NHPI women or White women, Native Hawaiian and Samoan women were twice and three times as likely to be diagnosed with uterine corpus cancer, respectively. Five-year relative survival varied from 42 to 74 percent in Laotians and Asian Indians/Pakistanis, respectively, with the largest differences seen for colorectal (43 to 72 percent) and prostate (63 to 97 percent) cancers.

“Behind aggregated Asian American and NHPI data are populations experiencing some of the highest cancer incidence rates in the country,” Wagle said in a statement.

One author disclosed ties to Genentech.

Abstract/Full Text