The Columbia River Oncology Program is a city-wide consortium of hospitals and physicians who are dedicated to a community-based clinical oncology program. In the short period of four years, we have established the groundwork that has allowed us to become an extremely successful CCOP. In order to further the development of our CCOP, we aim to: continue the organizational activities of CROP, assuring high levels of participation from investigators throughout the community; continue to increase accrual to therapeutic and cancer control protocols; continue to emphasize the high priority protocol selections of the National Cancer Institute and our research bases; maintain our data quality control program; maintain strong community-wide base of support, and to continue to involve primary care physicians in CROP activities and protocols. Several key factors have allowed the Columbia River Oncology Program to develop quickly. Our experienced CCOP investigators and staff have extensive clinical research credentials which pre-date the initiation of CROP and which have allowed us to exceed NCI basic accrual requirements; in 1988-89, our total accrual was 86.3 credits to therapeutic trials. The Portland area has community wide expertise in cancer control interventions and research. In addition, our location in Portland offers us access to a large, otherwise untapped patient population. We have an extremely strong base of support from the participating institutions which both considerably lowers the National Cancer Institute's cost per patient and assures the CCOP of continuity. These factors, combined with our demonstrated initiative and resources, promise to provide the NCI with a strong CCOP program that continues to develop its potential. In fact, our collaborative efforts have been so successful and have received such wide-spread community support that our CCOP was a model used as the basis for a successful Stage II Community Program for Clinical Research in AIDS.
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