Cancer accounted for 602,350 deaths in the United States in 2020. Relative to the size of the U.S. population, that translated to a cancer death rate of 182.8 deaths per 100,000 population, making cancer the second leading cause of death in the U.S., surpassed only by heart disease. Analysis of data from the National Center for Health Statistics, a unit of the CDC, provides the following details about regional cancer death rates in the U.S.  Follow the "region" links in the table below to see state-level data within each region:

Regional Cancer Death Rates in the U.S.

Region	Deaths	Population	Death Rate*
Far West	89,869	56,579,620	158.8
Great Lakes	95,354	46,834,910	203.6
Great Plains	41,272	21,481,834	192.1
Mid-Eastern	90,410	48,757,828	185.4
New England	28,748	14,847,468	193.6
Rocky Mountain	17,883	12,547,416	142.5
Southeastern	171,979	85,565,785	201.0
Southwestern	66,835	42,869,262	155.9
U.S.	602,350	329,484,123	182.8

(*) number of cancer deaths per 100,000 population

Report Period: 2020

Source: CDC Wonder. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Underlying Cause of Death 1999-2020 on CDC WONDER Online Database, released in 2021. Data are from the Multiple Cause of Death Files, 1999-2020, as compiled from data provided by the 57 vital statistics jurisdictions through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program.