Guiding Cancer Control

Guiding Cancer Control Synopsis

Throughout history, perhaps no other disease has generated the level of social, scientific, and political discourse or has had the degree of cultural significance as cancer. A collective in the truest sense of the word, "cancer" is a clustering of different diseases that afflict individuals in different ways. Its burdens are equally broad and diverse, from the physical, financial, and psychological tolls it imposes on individuals to the costs it inflicts upon the nation's clinical care and public health systems, and despite decades of concerted efforts often referred to as the "war on cancer", those costs have only continued to grow over time. The causes and effects of cancer are complex--in part preventable and treatable, but also in part unknown, and perhaps even unknowable. Guiding Cancer Control defines the key principles, attributes, methods, and tools needed to achieve the goal of implementing an effective national cancer control