The Rapid Case Ascertainment program (RCA) was developed in 1986-1987 to facilitate populationbased studies of cancer that propose to use the State of Connecticut as a population laboratory. It was incorporated as a YCC Shared Resource on January 1, 1995, and approved by the NCI for July 1, 1998. RCA functions as a field arm of the Connecticut Tumor Registry, the oldest population-based cancer registry in the country, and since 1973 an NCI-SEER site. RCA addresses the many requirements and administrative tasks common to all proposed hospital-based research in the state, and provides uniformly high-quality interface with those individuals, institutions and agencies who are crucial to the success of population-based cancer prevention and control research. Initiation of hospital-based research in Connecticut is complicated. Individual hospital requirements and personnel are always changing. Prior to RCA, an investigator who had a single study, a definitive funding period, and perhaps limited knowledge of inter-institutional policies, personalities, and politics had to spend an inordinate amount of time on nonscientific related effort to obtain and maintain the necessary approvals to conduct the research. Major services provided to investigators are: consulting and assisting in protocol writing in appropriate areas (protection of human subjects/ HIPAA, confidentiality, design of required institution-specific consent documents, etc.);obtaining all non-Yale approvals to conduct the research (State of CT, all community hospital IRBs, hospital administrative and departmental approvals, where necessary);providing names of patients with incident cancers by surveying all hospitals;and submitting annual reports and requests for re-approvals to all non-Yale IRBs. RCA services geared to enhance and strengthen the partnership of investigators and data sources are: providing feed-back of all published results of research to participating institutions;recognizing and acknowledging in print those institutions which participate in the research;and acting as a resource to the health care community in those areas relating to cancer prevention and control, including facilitating interaction between investigators with common interests and goals. RCA is a critical part of the YCC Program in Cancer Prevention and Control Research, as well as the Cancer Genetics Program. In 2005, 90% of RCA's overall use was by YCC members (52% peerreviewed YCC Members) from the Cancer Prevention &Control and the Cancer Genetics Research Programs.
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