After reviewing the National Vital Statistics Report based on the year 2005, I was surprised that heart disease and cancer were still the two leading diseases causing death in the United States. It seems that these two categories of diseases know no gender or racial boundaries and affect all groups equally. Therefore, I will discuss these two categories of diseases and their impact on the US population. In the United States, approximately 600,000 people die from heart disease each year (CDC, 2014). If you were to break it down, heart disease is responsible for 1 in 4 deaths (CDC, 2014). Coronary heart disease is the most common type of this disease and costs the United States approximately $110 billion each year in healthcare, medications, and lost productivity (CDC, 2014). The main risk factors for developing heart disease are high blood pressure, high LDL cholesterol and smoking. There are also many other factors such as: diabetes, obesity, poor diet, physical inactivity and excessive use of alcohol that contribute to the development of the disease. The second alarming report in the National Vital Statistics Report is the prevalence of cancer among the US population. Currently, approximately 1,665,540 new cases of cancer and over 585,720 cancer-related deaths will be diagnosed this year (ACS, 2014). Cancer is the second most common cause of death in the United States and accounts for a quarter of annual deaths. Cancer trends also need to be deciphered because the trends consist of 23 cancer types with the most common areas being lung, breast, colorectal, and prostate (ACS, 2014). Therefore, the numbers do not represent just one type of cancer, but are rather a combination of the different forms of the disease... at the heart of the paper... preventive screening. It is therefore vital that the public health community educates the masses and encourages preventative screening measures. The government could also offer additional incentives such as tax breaks that encourage people to lead healthy lifestyles. These proactive disease prevention measures would encourage people to lead healthier lifestyles which would reduce the overall prevalence of the two leading causes of death in the United States. Works CitedCancer Facts & Figures 2014. (2014). Retrieved May 25, 2014, from http://www.cancer.org/research/cancerfactsstatistics/cancerfactsfigures2014/indexCDC - DHDSP - Heart Disease Facts. (2014). Retrieved May 25, 2014, from http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htmTurnock, B.J. (2009). Public health: what it is and how it works (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.