Skin Cancer in Tampa Bay: The Numbers

Medically reviewed by Joshua Brady, MD, FAAD • September 2026

This page is a plain-language reference for Tampa Bay residents, reporters, and community groups, built from the federal cancer registries that track melanoma county by county: the National Cancer Institute's State Cancer Profiles and the SEER program. It lays out how often melanoma is diagnosed and how often it is fatal in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, and the counties around Tampa Bay, next to the Florida and national rates, and what those numbers mean for someone deciding whether to get a skin check.

We update this page when the registries publish new data years, typically once a year. Data last checked September 26, 2026.

Melanoma Diagnoses per Year, by County

All rates are age-adjusted to the 2000 US standard population so that counties with older or younger populations can be compared fairly, and cover all stages of melanoma diagnosed from 2019 through 2023.

Every county in the table runs above the national rate, and four of the six (Pasco, Hernando, Polk and Manatee) sit 35 to 58 percent above it. Hillsborough's rate is climbing while Pinellas's is falling.

Florida ranks 19th among states by melanoma rate (Utah's 43.8 is the highest), but its 8,470 cases a year are among the largest state totals in the country simply because of how many people live here.

Why Finding It Early Matters

Melanoma's outlook depends heavily on the stage at diagnosis. SEER tracks how far the disease had spread when it was found and the five-year relative survival for each stage, from 2016 through 2022:

SEER prints five-year survival for localized melanoma as 100.0% because relative survival compares people with melanoma to the general population of the same age, not to a raw count of deaths, so people diagnosed at the localized stage survived the following five years at the same rate as the general population.

What This Means for Tampa Bay

Tampa Bay's sun exposure is a year-round fact of life, not a summer season, and the county-level numbers above bear that out: every county around the bay carries a melanoma rate above the national average. Hillsborough's rate is also rising while Pinellas's is falling, a reminder that the trend line matters as much as the snapshot and can move in either direction from one place to the next.

The stage data tells the more hopeful half of the story. Most melanomas in the US are found while still localized, the stage where SEER's five-year relative survival tracks the general population, and that gap between localized and distant survival is almost entirely a function of when the cancer was caught. A yearly skin check by a dermatologist, plus checking your own skin between visits, is how a melanoma gets found at the localized stage rather than later.

If it has been a while since your last full-body skin exam, or you have never had one, Tampa Bay Dermatology welcomes new patients for a skin cancer screening. We accept most major insurance plans, including Medicare.