Disparities, cancer surveillance, and next steps

Effective cancer surveillance is critical for understanding disparities in current cancer incidence and treatment. The years ahead will see significant changes in how surveillance can be done.

Scenarios developed for the Cancer Surveillance Futures Project identify 4 paths for the next decade (Growth--Advances in science and technology for health care and cancer control; Stagnation--Hard times, slow and unequal progress on many fronts; Choice--Creating a healthy marketplace for health care; and Transformation--Accelerating cancer control for all).

In terms of getting to near-term and longer term success with cancer surveillance, the Intercultural Cancer Council and C-Change have made several recommendations including consistent collection of socioeconomic status, risk factors, and treatment information as well as community involvement in collecting cancer information and developing cancer control approaches, developing data standards, and broadening cancer surveillance to include treatment quality, risk factor data, and preneoplastic events.