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Americans in certain struggling parts of the country are dying from cancer at rising rates, even as the cancer death rate nationwide continues to fall, an exhaustive new analysis has found. In parts of the country that are relatively poor, and have higher rates of obesity and smoking, cancer death rates rose nearly 50 percent, while wealthier pockets of the country saw death rates fall by nearly half. (Tanner, 1/24)

The mortality rate due to cancer is falling nationwide, but worrisome pockets of deadly malignancy persist — and in some places have worsened — in regions throughout the country, according to the first-ever county-by-county analysis of cancer deaths across the United States. The death rate attributed to various types of cancer declined 20% between 1980 and 2014, according to research published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. During that time, the number of cancer deaths per 100,000 Americans dropped from 240.2 in 1980 to 192 in 2014. (Healy, 1/24)