Tackling inequalities in cancer care and outcomes: psychosocial mechanisms and targets for change

Disparities in cancer incidence, outcomes, and prevalence persist globally among countries.1,2 While incidence and mortality rates for most cancers are falling in many high-income Western countries, the opposite is true in numerous less-developed and economically transitioning regions. 1 With regard to colorectal cancer, for example, there is a 10fold variation in incidence rates worldwide, with high and rapidly increasing incidence rates in Eastern European countries and Japan, the lowest rates in Africa, Central and South America, and South Central Asia, and stabilizing or declining rates in the USA, New Zealand, and Canada. 1 Five-year relative survival rates for colorectal