Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

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That's public health question at jh.edu for future podcast episodes.

This is Lindsay Smith-Rogers.

Colorectal cancers are on the rise among people under age 50. Today, epidemiologist Dr.

Otis Brawley talks to Stephanie Desmond about some of the reasons behind the surge and what can

be done to reverse the trend. He also explains why any approved type of screening, not just

colonoscopies, can save lives. Let's listen. Otis Brawley,

thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. It's nice to have you back, and I wanted to

talk today about colon and rectal cancers. They are on the rise, especially with those under the age of 50,

and they're even declining over the age of 65.

So can us a picture? What's going on here?

Yeah, you know, colorectal cancer is a fascinating disease. If you look at the entire population in the United States, about 150,000 people get diagnosed with colorectal cancer every year.

It's about 52,000 to 53,000 who die every year.

Now, if we look at the epidemiology, look at the numbers in the population, since 1980, the risk of dying from colorectal cancer for all Americans

has halved.

This is a real success in both good screening and good treatment that the average Americans risk of dying from colorectal cancer in 24

is half what it was in 1980. Now, I told you about all Americans. Unfortunately, the risk of people

under the age of 55 has actually gone up and it's gone up more recently let's give

actual numbers in the 1990s every year about 10,000 of the 150,000 or so who were diagnosed with

colorectal cancer were under the age of 50 10,000 or so who were diagnosed with colorectal cancer or under the age of 50.

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