Wednesday, 25 January 2012

Rant about lack of Young Adult Statistics

I'm kinda annoyed right now.  I was searching around on www.cancer.ca, Canadian Cancer Society, to see if the support group they had requested more information on (one that I created recently for young adults in Nova Scotia with any form of cancer) was posted yet.  While searching I came across Canadian Cancer Statistics 2011... There's practically nothing about young adults!  They talk about 0-19 and 50+.  I found brief, very minor mentions of "those under age 50", one sentence about breast cancer occurrence, and a couple about 30-39.  I makes me angry that they would post all this information on 50+ (practically the entire paper), but barely refer to anyone between 19-49.  I guess I shouldn't act so surprised, at the YACC conference in November 2011 this type of exclusion was brought up, but I thought that as it is a growing concern, and with all the social workers that I contacted about the new support group being so thrilled at the start of a group "that is greatly needed", that we would have had more than a quick half sentence and a sprinkling of statistics.  Young adults may not have the highest numbers in some areas but I think it's our right to know the percentages and statistics that studies find of our specific ages.  I'm going to guess that they never bothered to define our age group or collect information on it to actually use to calculate in the numbers for their other statistics.

Well...  I guess that's going to be the next mission after I get this support group going at full steam.../rant.. for now...

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