A vision for cancer incidence surveillance in the United States

A comprehensive framework for cancer surveillance should span the entire lifespan and be capable of providing information on risk, burden, disparity, cost, cancer care, survival, and death. Cancer incidence, the point in the continuum when an individual is diagnosed with cancer, has a strong, well-developed system to produce information about newly diagnosed cancer cases. However, in the future, this system must be enhanced and integrated with other cancer surveillance networks and other systems to provide timely information on the burden of newly diagnosed patients with respect to various cross-cutting population characteristics (e.g., social, economic, race/ethnic, urbanicity, or access to care) to define, monitor, and reduce incidence and various disparities noted among population groups. Collaboration in data collection, standard setting, surveillance activities, research, education and training, data use, and advocacy among all registries and national programs will be important to the continued success of the cancer incidence surveillance system. The cancer registry is an integral part of the infrastructure to reduce the burden of cancer, including the numbers of newly diagnosed cases.