Kentucky has some of the worst rates for cancer in the United States, and those numbers are even worse in the eastern region of the Commonwealth.

The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky hosted a webinar last week to break down some of the disparities.

Eastern Kentucky Faces in its Battle with cancer.

More in today's medical news.

Kentucky has a massive cancer problem.

We ranked first in the nation in overall cancer incidence rates.

Second, in overall cancer mortality rates over 30,000 new cases each year, 10,000 deaths.

And so that's a that's a big problem.

And that's bad.

What's worse is that the cancer problem is significantly greater in eastern Kentucky.

So there are 54 counties in eastern Kentucky that are in the Appalachian region.

And cancer rates there are significantly higher.

For example, lung cancer incidence rates are over 100% higher in eastern Kentucky versus the National average.

Appalachia, Kentucky residents are 8% more likely to die from preventable or disagreeable cancer than their known Appalachian counterparts.

There's a lot of other statistics, but just suffice it to say that the cancer problem is very bad in eastern Kentucky.

What drives these this massive cancer problem?

It's a number of risk factors, social determinants of health and health behaviors.

Few examples they go through so we don't do so great in terms of smoking rates.

We're fourth worst in the US, 40% higher rates than the national average.

There's disparities that exist in many different populations rural Kentucky, Appalachian, Kentucky and black populations.

We're second worst in obesity, with rates that are 23% higher than the national average.

And we have really high infection rates of HCV.

We're sixth worse, 20% higher, over 100% higher than the national average.

There's low health care access, low health care engagement, low education levels.

So ultimately, that's just sort of a perfect storm for a collection of of risk behaviors, unhealthy health behaviors, social determinants of health that drive the high rates of cancer.

In Kentucky, the culture of Appalachia also is is a factor, I think, in terms of the high rates of cancer.

So Appalachia, rural areas have rich traditions and this can include tobacco use, generational tobacco use.

And maybe this is not intentional, but a lot of times you'll have family members that smoke like and then their kids will smoke.

And it just continues down through generations.

While incident rates for cancer in the Commonwealth are high.

Kentucky is only slightly below the national average for cancer screening and has the second highest rate of lung cancer screenings in the United States.