Cancer strikes Native Hawaiians at a higher rate than most other ethnic groups but there are things that can be done about it, a health expert told a gathering at the Japanese Cultural Center.

Dr. Laurence Kolonel, an epidemiologist at the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine for more than 30 years, told an audience gathered for the fourth annual Cancer Research Information Day that researchers aren't sure of all the factors that make Native Hawaiians more likely get cancer and to die from it than other groups.

More than 300 people registered to attend the Saturday conference.

Native Hawaiian women are especially vulnerable to breast and lung cancer, with a higher total cancer incidence and mortality rate than any other ethnic group in Hawai'i, Kolonel said.

Hawaiian men have the third-highest total cancer incidence and mortality rate in the state, behind white and Filipino men. Hawaiian men have the state's highest incidence rate of lung cancer, but the lowest rate of prostate cancer. Hawaiian men and women have the state's second-lowest rates of colon cancer, Kolonel said.

"We don't know exactly why," Kolonel said, referring to the breast and lung cancer rates among Hawaiian women. He said genetics could be a factor.

"It's still a little bit of a mystery," he said. "The Hawaiians were an isolated population for thousands of years and that can affect genetic makeup."

He called the higher mortality rate for Hawaiians who suffer from cancer "a failure of the system," citing lower economic status, insurance and education issues. Often, when cancer is detected in Hawaiians it is further advanced than in other groups, indicating that they are not seeing physicians often enough.

Kehau Matsumoto, a volunteer for the American Cancer Society who works with Native Hawaiians, said she has a hard time "getting young men and women to be more open about themselves. They're very private."

And the older women, she said, "care so much about their grandchildren and their land that they don't take care of themselves."