The Nation's Investment in Cancer Research
A Plan and Budget Proposal for Fiscal Year 2008
Prepared by the Director, National Cancer Institute as mandated by The National Cancer Act (P.L. 92-218)
Surveillance and Outreach
Cancer surveillance provides quantitative measures of the burden of cancer and the impact of cancer control in the general population. Moreover, the national cancer registry system in the United States provides a powerful tool for cancer research. The system is comprised of interdependent Federal, state, and private sector programs and provides surveillance data on all cancers. NCI and other Federal agencies help support cancer registries in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and several United States territories. NCI is working with multiple partners to better integrate surveillance data into cancer control planning. This use of cancer surveillance to help guide resource allocation is essential to reducing the cancer burden in all populations.
Outreach through cancer communication empowers people: it can raise their awareness of health problems and help them make informed cancer-related decisions. Effective cancer communications are targeted to users' needs across the cancer continuum — coprevention, detection and diagnosis, treatment, survivorship, and end-of-life issues. Changes in the role and accessibility of this information are continually altering health care practices, patient-physician relationships, and the way patients acquire and use information. Besides consulting their physicians, many consumers now seek health information from Internet and other media sources, which can vary in quality and reliability. NCI is working to ensure that everyone has ready access to timely, reliable, understandable information that is also culturally appropriate.
A Closer Look — NCI Outreach
NCI launched the Centers of Excellence in Cancer Communications Research (CECCR) initiative in 2003. CECCR provides the infrastructure for interdisciplinary teams at four centers to promote advances in cancer communications, develop interventions, translate theory into practice, and train health communicators. Their recent work includes:
- The University of Michigan's "Guide to Decide" project is exploring ways of communicating risk about using tamoxifen for breast cancer prevention to women at high risk for the disease across all sociodemographic groups.
- The University of Pennsylvania is studying cancer-related information searching and scanning behavior in the general population, assessing associations with post-diagnosis treatment choices or cancer screening and prevention behavior.
- The Saint Louis University Ozioma News Service project is developing and testing a computer-based news service that will contribute community-specific stories and cancer data to local Black newspapers.
- The University of Wisconsin-Madison is examining whether Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support Systems that create "healing relationships" for patients over time improve cancer outcomes and survivorship experiences. This project supports the Institute of Medicine goal to improve health outcomes for patients with chronic conditions.
