People who live in Urbandale’s ZIP code 50323 are about 100 times more at risk of getting breast cancer than Iowans who live in Fort Dodge’s ZIP code 50501.
That’s according to a new University of Iowa mapping tool that lets residents see how cancer patterns differ from one part of a city or region to another.
Cancer data available to Iowans has long been reported at the county level, so entire metro areas and rural communities were folded into a single county average. But the new tool, called Cancer Analytics & Maps for Small Areas, or CAMSA, uses statistical models rather than exact case counts to estimate rates at the ZIP-code level instead of relying only on typical county averages…