Cancer Control (CC) The over-arching goal of the Cancer Control (CC) Program is to reduce cancer risk and mortality and to improve the quality of care and quality of life for individuals and populations. Program members conduct cancer behavioral research, addressing the adoption of cancer-causing behaviors by adolescents and young adults, and health services research, addressing the impact of emerging technologies and health care policies on cancer care and outcomes across the continuum from prevention to screening and treatment. Working together through inter-disciplinary teams that include physician-scientists, behavioral and communications scientists, functional brain scientists, psychologists, decision scientists, economists, statisticians, geospatial and health services researchers; 35 program members from 11 departments actively are pursuing six scientific themes: (1) Media and marketing influences on adoption of tobacco, alcohol and eating behaviors during adolescence; (2) Tobacco regulatory research, (3) Geospatial research addressing how local geography affects cancer behaviors and outcomes; (4) Comparative effectiveness of emerging cancer screening and treatment technologies; (5) Studies that characterize how practice variation and health care reform affect cancer care and outcomes; and (6) Effective communication of the benefits and harms of cancer screening and treatments, to foster informed choice and enhanced survivorship through decision support. Translational goals include establishing the scientific basis for regulatory policies, aimed at tobacco and other cancer causing behaviors, and for policies that guide cancer screening and the delivery of cancer care. Major program accomplishments include establishing a scientific basis for policies to limit movie smoking cues and translating those findings into policies that reduced exposure, publishing paradigm-shifting studies on overdiagnosis as it relates to cancer screening and diagnosis, conducting practice-changing clinical trials that affected recommendations for lung cancer screening and early palliative care, and delivering cancer care to the rural underserved. Program Co-Directors actively recruit scientists and foster a stimulating inter- disciplinary research environment through monthly research group meetings (behavior and health services), working group meetings (lung screening, decision support/survivorship), quarterly full program meetings, and active mentorship of Program members. NCCC further supports CC Program research through pilot funding and strategic recruitments of new investigators, including early-stage investigators who have strengthened CC ties with The Dartmouth Institute. Members heavily use the Biostatistics Shared Resource, which now includes geospatial services essential to our ongoing research. More than 470 cancer-related manuscripts have been published in the reporting period (17% in journals with an impact factor of 8 or more), with 32 members on intra-program (151=32%) and 21 members on inter-program (89=19%) collaborations. Total Program funding currently is $9.6M, of which $9.1M is peer-reviewed and $3.8M is from NCI.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 1911 publications
