Microproduct data guideintermediate

U.S. Cancer Statistics

Official federal cancer incidence and mortality statistics for building state comparison and cancer-burden dashboards.

Start the guide Open official source

At a glance

Difficulty
Intermediate — some data preparation helps
Size
Small · ≤0.2 GB
Formats
CSV, JSON, Excel
Access
Download or API
API key
Not required
Provider
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Updates
Annual
Data terms
U.S. Public Domain with CDC attribution and use requirements

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

USCS is the official federal combination of NPCR and SEER incidence with NVSS mortality. Start with a public state-level incidence table, not the SEER*Stat research file. Rates are age-adjusted to a standard population and are not individual case listings.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • An internet connection
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Open the USCS page and locate Data Visualizations or public-use tables.
  2. 2.Download or query one recent state incidence file.
  3. 3.Keep state, cancer site, year, and age-adjusted rate.
Open official source
3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

import pandas as pd
import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://data.cdc.gov/resource/5kmb-vjq2.json",
    params={"$limit": 50, "$order": "year DESC"},
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
stats = pd.DataFrame(response.json())
stats["retrieved_at_utc"] = pd.Timestamp.now(tz="UTC")
print(stats.head())
4

Test a useful signal

Compare state cancer incidence rows

Test whether a USCS public table can power a bounded state-burden sketch.

  1. 01Keep geography, site, year, and age-adjusted rate from the extract.
  2. 02Rank a single site-year by rate and flag missing geographies.
  3. 03Explain that USCS public tables are aggregated rates, not SEER research microdata, and cannot identify individuals.

Dataset details

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-18. Temporal coverage: USCS incidence and mortality years published by CDC and NCI.

Theme

Health, Food & Safety

Domains

Public HealthEpidemiology

Data types

TabularAggregated Data

Tasks

Incidence ComparisonTrend AnalysisPublic Health Planning

Geography

United States

Formats

CSVJSONExcel

Provider

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Data terms

U.S. Public Domain with CDC attribution and use requirements