Services to examine data sources and methodologies to estimate risk estimates by smoking status for smoking related causes of death.

Investigators

Abstract

NCI?s Surveillance Research Program (SRP) within the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) serves as the most authoritative source of information on cancer incidence, prevalence, mortality, and survival in the United States. Recently staff at NCI in collaboration with Drs. Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz completed an interactive web site called ?Know Your Risks: Interactive Risk Charts to Put Cancer in Context?. This website is undergoing final NCI review before it is publically launched. This website is based on earlier work by Drs. Woloshin and Schwartz (JNCI 2002, 2008, and University of California Press, 2008). Drs. Woloshin and Schwartz indicated that to make sense of the disease risks they face, people need basic facts about the magnitude of a particular risk and how one risk compares with other risks. Unfortunately, this fundamental information is not readily available to patients or physicians. They created simple static one-page charts that present the 10-year chance of dying from various causes. There was recognition that these static risk charts could be greatly enhanced by harnessing the power of the web to produce interactive risk charts. The website can produce four types of charts: (1) Big Picture Charts which are similar to the static charts developed in the JNCI articles; (2) Custom Charts which allows the user to customize the causes of death and time horizon for the risks; (3) Your Chances Charts which allows the user to rank the causes of death for a specific age, race, and gender, and to compare the risks when the person was 10 years younger, and when the person will be 10 years older; and (4) Special Cancer Tables which present the risk of diagnosis and death for cancers in the time frame selected.