Creation and Evaluation of the Illinois Cancer Risk Index as a Predictor of Four Common Cancers

Abstract

Introduction Nearly half of all cancer deaths in the US are attributed to 4 common cancers: lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate. Illinois residents experience higher rates of cancer death from all 4 cancers compared with the US overall. We developed the Illinois Cancer Risk Index (ICRI), which Incorporates many predictors of these cancers Into a single summary measure, to identify Illinois counties that would benefit most from public health intervention. Methods We identified 90 county-level predictors of 4 common cancers, used multicollinearity testing to reduce this number to 61, and applied factor analysis to extract and analyze 4 factors representing 25 variables. Next, we created the ICRI by regressing the 4 factors on our outcome of interest — an age-adjusted common cancers mortality rate (CCMR) Incorporating the direction of the β-efficients from regression mode s to sum actor scores. Finally we mapped and assessed the The ICRI was positively associated with the CCMR (r = 0.59, P