IGF::OT::IGF SRP QA/QI and GIS activities- Technical Support for Cancer Control and Population Research - Call Order No. HHSN26100001

Westat, Inc., Rockville MD

Investigators

Abstract

The Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) aims to reduce the risk, incidence, and deaths from cancer as well as enhance the quality of life through research in epidemiology, behavioral sciences, health services, surveillance, and cancer survivorship. Cancer surveillance provides a quantitative portrait of cancer and its determinants in a defined population. The core functions of cancer surveillance are the measurement of cancer incidence, morbidity, survival, and mortality for persons with cancer. It also includes the assessment of genetic predisposition, environmental and behavioral risk factors, screening practices, and the quality of care from prevention through palliation. Cancer surveillance tells us where we are in the effort to reduce the cancer burden and also generates the observations that form the basis for cancer research and interventions for cancer prevention and control. This surveillance infrastructure benefits the public, policymakers, and scientists in understanding changes in cancer incidence and outcomes in all segments of the US population over time. Surveillance Research Program (SRP) of the Division of Cancer Control and population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute provides national leadership in the science of cancer surveillance as well as analytical tools and methodological expertise in collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and disseminating reliable population-based cancer statistics. Surveillance Research Program is a home of the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program - a system of population-based cancer registries that collects data on diagnosis, treatment and outcomes of cancer in approximately 30 percent of the U.S. population for public health reporting and to provide a national infrastructure to support cancer research. SEER Cancer registries report > 450,000 incident cases annually. Data is collected by central cancer registries from a variety of facilities including hospitals, pathology laboratories, radiology facilities and doctors? offices. Data is obtained electronically or in paper form or is collected by registry staff. Data collected includes demographic information including age, sex and race/ethnicity; diagnostic information including date of diagnosis and stage at diagnosis; characteristics of the cancer including site, histology/morphology, size of tumor, grade and first course of treatment. SRP produces and disseminates the following cancer statistics: Incidence, Mortality, Prevalence, and Survival rates. Other geographically based information includes: Cancer Screening, Risk Factors, Demographics, and Cancer Knowledge. Most of these data are produced at the County and State levels of geography. The SEER Program is the only source of population based survival data in the US and produces statistics on cancer survival by stage at diagnosis. Follow-up data, crucial for generating survival statistics, is obtained by both passive and active follow-up activities. The SEER Program is known as the ?Gold Standard? for cancer data. SEER central cancer registries submit a complete data file every November containing data on all cases reported by the registry during its participation in the SEER Program. There are quality standards that are contractually required for each SEER registry. Examination of data quality on a yearly basis, as well as feedback from registry staff, may reveal issues that require examination in order to maintain or enhance data quality. Structured Quality Control and Quality Improvement (QC/QI) activities include but are not limited to case finding, recoding, reliability analysis, generation of Data Quality Profiles, and data correction. QC/QI studies typically result in recommendations about the best sources of specific data items and recommendations on how to code specific data items. In addition, there are continual efforts to expand the data fields that are routinely collected and are available for cancer. More information about these activities can be found at: www.seer.cancer.gov. In addition to quality control and quality improvement of cancer data, Surveillance Research Program provides optimal statistical methods for the collection, analysis, and presentation of essential measures related to the cancer control, surveillance, and epidemiology programs of the National Cancer Institute and the broader cancer control and research community http://seer.cancer.gov/statistics/summaries.html. These methods are pertinent to cancer outcomes, risk and behavioral factors, spatial and temporal factors, genetic factors, and health care delivery factors. SRP has also been active in the development of geospatial and geo-statistical methods and tools for the development, analysis, dissemination, and visualization of geographically based cancer data, screening, and risk factors for cancer. State Cancer Profiles http://seer.cancer.gov/statistics/scp.html , GIS Portal http://seer.cancer.gov/statistics/gis.html , and Small Area Estimates http://sae.cancer.gov/ are the most comprehensive geo-spatial and geo-statistical resources at NCI respectively. These resources are important for cancer control planning as well as population based cancer research. Furthermore, SRP supports research on informatics technology to optimize and enhance the acquisition, storage, retrieval, de-identification, analyses, reporting, and visualization of cancer surveillance systems http://surveillance.cancer.gov/branches/sib/. In SRP, maintaining extremely high quality data, methods, and tools for dissemination of cancer statistics is accomplished through recruitment of highly qualified registry staff and a broad spectrum of activities that are central to the technical requirements described below.