NCI has launched the pilot phase of its Community Cancer Centers Program (NCCCP), an initiative that aims to bring the latest advances in cancer care to patients where they live. The project will focus on underserved communities and groups that are disproportionately affected by the disease.

Over the next 3 years, 16 community hospitals will work together and with NCI to identify the best strategies for delivering state-of-the-art cancer care in community hospitals. A successful pilot could lead to a national network of community cancer centers that would benefit patients and researchers alike.  Read more  

Despite many decades of investigation and progress that's been made in early diagnosis and treatment, the exact causes of most cancers remain unknown. For most of the cancers we treat, there exists a heterogeneous mix of genetic changes and numerous potential environmental influences that challenge the development of simple prevention strategies.

This has resulted in a level of frustration by the public regarding the primary prevention of cancer, including scientifically based recommendations for diet and lifestyle interventions. In recent years this public frustration has included the development and testing of targeted preventive oral agents that have often carried significant risk of causing a shift to other diseases or compromising daily quality of life. Our patients have clearly told us they are unwilling to trade healthy lives for these risks, even in the face of a risk of cancer.  Read more  

The NCI Cancer Bulletin is produced by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). NCI, which was established in 1937, leads the national effort to eliminate the suffering and death due to cancer. Through basic, clinical, and population-based biomedical research and training, NCI conducts and supports research that will lead to a future in which we can identify the environmental and genetic causes of cancer, prevent cancer before it starts, identify cancers that do develop at the earliest stage, eliminate cancers through innovative treatment interventions, and biologically control those cancers that we cannot eliminate so they become manageable, chronic diseases. For more information on cancer, call 1-800-4-CANCER or visit http://www.cancer.gov. NCI Cancer Bulletin staff can be reached at ncicancerbulletin@mail.nih.gov.