Australian Cancer Atlas: How does where you live in Australia affect diagnosis or early death?

[Admin]

Jim Marshall (not a doctor) said ...

Many long years ago, from the very first day Tony Maxwell and Jim Marshall decided to make the Advanced Prostate Cancer Support Group a national body, knowing the numbers - statistics was a key focus.

While Jim started with finding advanced men, Tony started with finding how many advanced men there are, and where they are, working through census data. Tony's figures were the first produced in Australia.

 

Jump forward to 2019, and there is now an atlas of the whole of Australia, for most common cancers.

Checking around where I live, it seems to me from the maps that:

• in the wealthier areas you have more chance of a diagnosis, and less chance of dying early; and
• in less wealthy areas you have less chance of a diagnosis, and a greater chance of dying early.

If you are a bit lost at the start, and don't want to use the tutorial, can I suggest:

• Where it says All cancers, select Prostate cancer (you may have to click Load Data to get the men)
• After you have seen the Diagnosis map, Drop down Diagnosis to choose Excess Deaths.
• Where it says Enter suburb or postcode, you put in yours.
• Click away ...

... end Jim

https://atlas.cancer.org.au/

[Patrick Turner]

Hi Jim, 

I found the atlas didn't seem to show much for ACT but judging by the queue of men I have seen at Canberra Hospital and the number of blokes who I watched die before getting my treatment there should be a lot of dots for each postcode here. There would have been others I didn't see or those treated privately. I found the atlas site to be non logical to use, so it was not informative, and I am just trying to fathom if there is anything in my environment that might cause higher rate of Pca. Could it possibly be due to the polluting presence of Polly Tishans here?     🙂 

BUT, for two areas on the main map of all of Australia there were 2 hot spots for lots of cancer in NSW west of and north west of Sydney, although just where cities were was not shown and the zoom in + or - sign didn't work. 

Meanwhile, I have noticed that the brass statue of a well loved research monkey in the hospital grounds is suffering because his balls dropped off due to cold weather here.

Try to stay well pal,

Patrick Turner.