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Cancer isn't really an equal opportunity disease. It is the second-biggest killer of Americans (after heart disease), but your gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic level, and more have a big impact on whether you get cancer, when you develop it, and what your chance of survival is.

In this, the first in a series, TakePart takes a look at specific groups of people who bear an extraordinary burden when it comes to cancer: These are the Americans who are paying a very high price and who live with the real "costs" (financial, physical, mental and emotional) of the disease.

The Obesity Epidemic Spawns Another Health Risk: Cancer

STATISTIC: African-American men are more likely to have cancer, and they are about 20 percent more likely to die of it.

Everyone fears cancer, but perhaps no group should fear it more than African-American men. As a group, black men have higher rates of several common types of cancers and are also more likely to die from the disease compared to other racial and ethnic groups. The death rate for cancer in black men is 288.3 per 100,000 people compared to 221.9 for non-Hispanic white men.

Consider these facts:

The death rate for prostate cancer inmen is about 2.4 times higher than in white men. For reasons that are unclear, prostate cancer in black men is often a more aggressive disease, which leads to higher death rates.

African-American men are 1.4 times more likely to have lung cancer (the leading cause of cancer deaths in men) and 1.5 times more likely to have prostate cancer compared to white men.

African-American men are twice as likely to have stomach cancer as white men.

African-American men had lower five-year cancer survival rates for lung, colon, and pancreatic cancer compared to white men.

See the article here:
One Group Dies From Cancer More Often Than Any Other. Do You Know Who It Is?