In the year 2000, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander women under age 50 had the second-lowest breast cancer rates of any racial or ethnic group in the United States. By 2021, they had the highest — tied with white women at approximately 86 cases per 100,000.
That change — a 50% increase in breast cancer among AAPI women under 50 in just over two decades — is documented in the American Cancer Society's Cancer Statistics 2026 report and confirmed by a major peer-reviewed study published in 2026 analyzing data from 148,608 AANHPI women diagnosed with invasive breast cancer between 2000 and 2022.
