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Abstract:
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Our aim in this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of changes in the living or social environments in Japan including the Japanese government policies for public health on people's breast cancer risks. To accomplish our aim, a newly proposed model (Effective Experience model), which decomposes the variation in the age-by-period data for breast cancer deaths into age and experience effects, is fitted to the data for breast cancer deaths obtained from the Japan Vital Statistics, where the age and experience effects are associated with physiological changes with people's aging and with sociological or environmental changes including those in government policies for public health respectively. The result of fitting the Effective Experience model to the data suggested effects of breast cancer screening system established by local governments around 1970 and those of mammographic screening the Japanese government had recommended for all females over 50 since 2000 and for all females over 40 since 2005 to decrease Japanese breast cancer deaths. Besides, it also suggested effects of westernized food culture since 1960s and low fertility rates in these several decades in Japan.
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