Recently the National Cancer Institute released its National Cancer Plan which provides a comprehensive framework to develop cancer control strategies, share knowledge, and accelerate progress.
The overall objective is to end cancer as we know it; a target that has been in place since the National Cancer Act was originally signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937. President Richard M. Nixon signed an amendment to the National Cancer Act in 1971, when cancer was the second leading cause of death in the United States. He declared this as the “war on cancer” and signed it on December 23, 1971, stating, “I hope that in the years ahead that we look back on this day and this action shown as being the most significant action taken during this administration.” Unfortunately, Watergate overshadowed this accomplishment, but the war on cancer continues today.
The National Cancer Plan has eight goals:
- Prevent cancer
- Detect cancers early
- Develop effective treatments
- Eliminate inequities
- Develop optimal care
- Engage every person
- Maximize data utility
- Optimize the workforce
Of these, our work at BioMedware has been strongly engaged with four of these (many of the resulting publications can be found here):
- Preventing cancer by identifying cancer risk factors (see for example our work on environmental risk quantification and the prediction of water lead levels in Flint, Michigan, and impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill) and applications to bladder cancers, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, testicular cancer, prostate cancer and others);
- Detecting cancers early by identifying those sub-populations with excesses of cancer by stage of diagnosis and other factors (see for example papers on prostate and breast cancers);
- Eliminating inequities by identifying disparities in cancer risk factors, incidence, mortality and screening (for example impacts of age, race and socioeconomic status on late-stage diagnosis for prostate and breast cancer), and by developing novel methods for geospatial cancer disparity analysis.
- Maximizing data utility by developing software and tools for visualization and exploratory space-time data analysis (Vesta); for securing health registry data (see paper on geospatial cryptography); for advancing the use of geocoding in the health sciences; for the detection of temporal trends in the spatial distributions of cancer; for advancing the use of residential mobility in cancer analysis; and for the analysis of health data using space-time geostatistics.
Advancing our nation’s war on cancer requires “situational awareness”. Situational awareness is a clear understanding of our current situation, where we need to go, where the obstacles are, and what we need to do to achieve our objectives. The latest release of our National Cancer Plan provides the overall objectives and directions to pursue. It’s up to each of us, as researchers, caregivers, organizations, and policymakers, to put this plan into play.