Abstract Cancer is a problem of both global and local concern. We determined the geo-epidemiological and spatial distribution of the 10 most common cancers in Iran. We used the data of the Iranian Cancer Registry for the year 2014 analysing the prevalence of 112,131 registered cancer cases with the aim of detecting potential geographical underlying causes. The geographic distribution of cancers is reported as standardized incidence rates at the provin- cial level considering risk with respect to sex and age. A geograph- ical information systems (GIS) approach based on Anselin Local Moran’s index method was used to map clusters and spatial auto- correlation patterns. The mean age of the patients was 55.6 (±17.8) and 61.7 (±18.2) for females and males, respectively, in the database which showed 46.1% (n=51,665) of all cases to be female. Analysis of the spatial distribution of cancers showed sig- nificant differences among the different provinces. Stomach and breast cancers were the most prevalent cancers in men and females, respectively. The highest incidence rates of stomach can- cer were found in Ardabil and Zanjan provinces, with 48.38 and 48.08 per 100,000 population, respectively, while Tehran and Yazd provinces had the highest incidences of breast cancer, 51.0 and 47.5 per 100,000 population, respectively. Strong clustering patterns for stomach and breast cancers were identified in the north-western provinces and in Semnan Province, respectively. These patterns indicate a diversity of geo-epidemiological con- tributing factors to cancer incidence in Iran. Introduction Cancer is a universal public health burden lacking a common pre-emptive approach. The global burden of disease study in 2017 (GBD 2017) reported 24.5 million incident cancer cases world- wide (Global Burden of Disease Cancer Collaboration, 2019). Bray et al. (2018) in their study refer to GLOBOCAN, which is another body providing estimates of cancer incidence, and report that the incidence rates of cancer and the related deaths in Asia are 48.4% and 57.3%, respectively (The Lancet, 2018). According to previous studies, in developed countries, the prevalence of cancers is predicted to reach 45% by the year 2025 (Kamangar et al., 2006). Notably, in low- and middle-income countries, population growth and aging are the major contributors to the increase of can- cer incidence (Global Burden of Disease Cancer Collaboration, 2019). Besides, more than 70% of all the cancer-related deaths occur in countries whose populations have a medium to the low- level standard of living as well as limited resources for the preven- tion, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer (Mousavi et al., 2008). In Iran, aging and increased related risk factors are known as Correspondence: Marzieh Nojomi, Preventive Medicine and Public Health Research Center, Psychosocial Health Research Institute, Community and Family Medicine Department, School of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Postal code: 1449614542, Tehran, Iran. Fax: +98.2186703350. E-mail: mnojomi@iums.ac.ir Key words: Cancer; epidemiology; spatial analysis; cluster analysis; Iran. Acknowledgements and funding: this research was supported by the Elite Researcher Grant Committee under award number of 982858 from the National Institute for Medical Research Development (NIMAD), Tehran, Iran. We would like to thank the Iranian national population- based cancer registry secretariat and Cancer Office of the Ministry of Health of Iran for their complete collaborations. Conflict of interests: the corresponding author reports grants from the National Institutes for Medical Research Development (NIMAD), dur- ing performing the study. All the other authors declare no conflict of interests. Received for publication: 7 June 2020. Revision received: 12 November 2020. Accepted for publication: 15 November 2020. ©Copyright: the Author(s), 2021 Licensee PAGEPress, Italy Geospatial Health 2021; 16:904 doi:10.4081/gh.2021.904 This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (CC BY-NC 4.0) which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, pro- vided the original author(s) and source are credited. Geo-epidemiological reporting and spatial clustering of the 10 most prevalent cancers in Iran Ebrahim Babaee, 1 Gholamreza Roshandel, 2,3 Meysam Olfatifar, 4 Arash Tehrani-Banihashemi, 1 Arezou Ashaari, 1 Marzieh Nojomi 1,5 1 Department of Community Medicine, Preventive Medicine and Public Health Research Centre, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; 2 Golestan Research Centre of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Iran; 3 Iranian National Population-Based Cancer Registry Secretariat, Cancer Office, Deputy of Health, Ministry of Health, Tehran, Iran; 4 Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases Research Centre, Research Institute for Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; 5 Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Nipissing University, North Bay, ON, Canada [page 80] [Geospatial Health 2021; 16:904] Geospatial Health 2021; volume 16:904 Non-commercial use only