NCI Director's Message
The National Cancer Institute leads the nation’s efforts to discover better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer. In its labs in Bethesda, Maryland, and throughout its network of extramural scientists and 63 NCI-designated Cancer Centers, NCI carries out groundbreaking research and connects patients and their families to the highest caliber, state-of-the-art care. Yet we are acutely aware that the vast majority of people in our country are diagnosed and cared for in the communities where they live. Community hospitals and private practice oncologists provide outstanding health care for millions of Americans. NCI is committed to identifying ways to integrate the latest that science has to offer into this already exceptional community-based care.
In 2007, NCI launched the NCI Community Cancer Centers Program (NCCCP) precisely to examine how we can best provide access to the latest scientific advances in the community setting. During this three-year pilot, NCCCP will develop and evaluate programs designed to determine the essential elements of effective community-based cancer care and to identify ways to facilitate broader engagement in cancer research.
The NCCCP pilot phase involves 16 community hospitals representing a cross-section of this country’s population and its health care systems—with a special emphasis on minority and underserved patients. Through activities such as enhanced community outreach, patient assistance, and cancer screening and follow-up, the NCCCP sites will evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts to change the course of cancer for the people in these communities.
At the end of this first year of the pilot, significant progress has been made toward the goals of bringing the latest scientific advances and highest level of multi-specialty care to patients where they live. For example, each participating community hospital is accruing more patients to clinical trials, establishing national standards for handling biospecimens, and entering into new collaborations with NCI-designated Cancer Centers.
Another important goal of the NCCCP is to study ways in which the community health care system can be electronically connected so that its patients can take part in the early phases of new drug development—an effort even more critical in this evolving period of highly personalized medicine. The pilot is fast creating an interconnected network of community cancer centers that is a model for enabling cancer research through computerized data sharing and greater inclusion of community-based practitioners.
Building upon the accomplishments of the NCCCP pilot, we hope to expand the number of participating hospitals to reach an even broader range of communities in the future. And we will achieve ultimate success by the cancers prevented or diagnosed at their earliest stages, and by the number of lives saved.
Dr. John E. Niederhuber
Director, National Cancer Institute
