On this website, data are shown by cancer reporting zone. These zones have been designed so that they have a minimum population, have similar demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, and are geographically compact (they minimize the distance between different parts of the zone). The minimum population for each zone is 50,000 people.

Counties with larger populations (more than 100,000 people) were divided into multiple zones by combining adjacent census tracts. For the rest of the state, adjacent counties and parts of counties were combined to form zones. Three demographic and socioeconomic characteristics were used to determine similarity: the percent minority population (percent of the population who are not non-Hispanic White), percent of the population with incomes below poverty, and the proportion of the population living in urban and rural areas.

We used population data from Census 2010 and Census 2010 tract geographies to construct the zones. Poverty data came from the American Community Survey 2012-2016 5-year data. We used a software zone design program called AZTool to identify aggregations of adjacent tracts and counties that optimize the three objectives: a target population of 50,000, geographic compactness, and similarity in terms of minority population, poverty, and urbanicity characteristics

Aggregation: Collections of smaller units grouped together for the purposes of statistical reporting. See Methodology for more information.

Age-Adjusted Incidence Rate (AAIR): Age-adjustment is a statistical method that allows comparisons of incidence rates to be made between populations with different age distributions. This is important since the incidence of most cancers increases with age. An age-adjusted cancer incidence (or death) rate is defined as the number of new cancers (or deaths) per 100,000 population that would occur in a certain period of time if that population had a ‘standard’ age distribution. In the Louisiana Cancer Maps, incidence rates are age-adjusted using the U.S. 2000 Standard Population.

Confidence Interval: A statistical measure of the precision of the observed incidence rate. The lower confidence interval (LCI) and upper confidence interval (UCI) provide a range within which the true rate is thought to be with 95% confidence. Rates based on larger numbers of cases are subject to less variation.

Data Suppression: To ensure confidentiality and stable statistical rates, cancer incidence rates are not reported if based on fewer than 16 cancer cases.

Demographics: Statistical data relating to the population and particular groups within it.

Incidence: The number of new cases of cancer diagnosed in the selected time period.

% Population with income below poverty: Percent of the population with income below the federal poverty level.
Source: US Census, 2010.

Race/Ethnicity: Race/ethnicity is categorized as: All races/ethnicities, Non-Hispanic (NH) White, NH Black. "All races" includes all cases regardless of race/ethnicity.

Racial/Ethnic Composition: Distribution of residents’ race/ethnicity (e.g., % non-Hispanic White, % non-Hispanic Black).
Source: US Census, 2010.

% Rural: Percent of residents who reside in blocks that are designated as rural.
Source: US Census, 2010.

Sex: Louisiana Cancer Registry defines this field as the sex or gender of the cancer patient, and codes available are male, female, intersex, transsexual, and transgender (natal male, natal female, or not specified). However, categories beyond male and female are not consistently coded by medical reporting facilities, and population estimates for gender categories beyond male and female are not available. Thus, cancer incidence data are reported for only male and female sex at this time.