title: Epidemiologic, Racial and Healthographic Mapping of Delaware Pediatric Cancer: 2004-2014.
abstract: Childhood cancer remains the leading cause of disease-related death among children 0 to 14 years and incidence varies by race, ethnicity, sex, geographic locale, and age at onset. However, data are unavailable in some regions, indicative of a need for such information for cancer awareness, education and prevention program. We utilized retrospective epidemiologic design to assess and characterize pediatric tumors in the Nemours Electronic Medical Records, between 2004 and 2014. Tumor frequency and children population size were used to determine the period prevalence as cumulative incidence (CI) proportion, as well as chi-square and Poisson Regression. The CI for overall childhood cancer in Delaware was 234 per 100,000 children, and varied by race, black (273 per 100,000), white (189 per 100,000). Similarly, sex variability was observed in CI, boys (237 per 100,000) and girls (230 per 100,000). The most commonly diagnosed malignancies were acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), Central Nervous System (CNS)/brain and renal cancer. The geographic locales with relatively higher cancer CI in the state of DE were zip codes 19804 and 19960, but this does not imply cancer clustering. Differences in overall childhood cancer distribution occurred by race, sex, geography, and age. These findings are indicative of the need for cancer-specific health education, awareness and prevention programs in reducing the observed disparities in Delaware.
authors.affiliation: Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, Office of Health Equity and Inclusion, 2200 Concord Pike, Wilmington, DE 19803, USA. drlholmesjr@gmail.com.|Biological Sciences Department, University of Delaware, 118 Wolf Hall, Newark, DE 19716, USA. drlholmesjr@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Laurens
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Holmes
authors.affiliation: Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, Office of Health Equity and Inclusion, 2200 Concord Pike, Wilmington, DE 19803, USA. jonathan.vandenberg@furman.edu.|Biological Sciences Department, Furman University, 3300 Poinsett Hwy, Greenville, SC 29613, USA. jonathan.vandenberg@furman.edu.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Vandenberg
authors.affiliation: Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, Office of Health Equity and Inclusion, 2200 Concord Pike, Wilmington, DE 19803, USA. lavisha.mcclarin@nemours.org.|Epidemiology &amp; Biostatistics Department, University of Maryland-College Park, 255 Campus Drive, College Park, MD 20740, USA. lavisha.mcclarin@nemours.org.
authors.forename: Lavisha
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: McClarin
authors.affiliation: Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, Office of Health Equity and Inclusion, 2200 Concord Pike, Wilmington, DE 19803, USA. kirk.dabney@nemours.org.
authors.forename: Kirk
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dabney
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001741:Black or African American / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003691:Delaware / Q000453:epidemiology; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012737:Sex Factors; D044465:White People / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
keywords: Delaware; cumulative incidence; health disparities; pediatric cancer