NCI - The Nation's Investment in Cancer Research 2006

Delivering the Promise

NCI's Budget Increase Request Emphasizes Patient Care and Public Health

With a sizable portion of our increase request devoted to quality of care, survivorship, tobacco control, and energy balance issues, the seven strategic investment areas outlined in this document point to improved patient care and public health as our ultimate destination.

Improving the Quality of Cancer Care

Quality cancer care means evidence-based, patient centered care that is timely, technically competent, and administered with sound communication, shared decision making, and cultural sensitivity. NCI investments in Fiscal Year 2006 will support:

Community-based interventions that address disparities in care and their potential to be replicated in a culturally appropriate manner.
Training programs for creating a diverse and culturally sensitive research and care workforce.
Collaborations to improve early detection, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and survivorship for people over 65.
Collaborations for communicating risk, delivering evidence-based preventions, and evaluating prevention practices for improved patient outcomes.

Optimizing Health and Quality of Life after Cancer

For the nearly ten million Americans now living with a history of cancer, life after cancer means finding a new balance - one that celebrates the triumph and relief of completing treatment, recognizes changes or losses the disease has wrought, and assimilates revised perspectives, newfound strengths, and lingering uncertainties. NCI's Fiscal Year 2006 investments will include research and development to:

Better understand and address survivorship issues in underserved populations.
Reduce the long-term side effects of cancer treatment and improve symptom management.
Include more quality-of-life endpoints within NCI-supported clinical trials.
Track, store, and retrieve patient information needed by healthcare providers for follow-up care.
Identify genetic factors that affect prognosis, tumor progression, therapeutic outcomes, and side effects.

Understanding Tobacco Use and Tobacco-Related Cancers

Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of illness and death in the United States. Cancers of the lung, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, pancreas, urinary bladder and renal pelvis have all been scientifically linked to tobacco use. Dramatically reducing and treating tobacco use and tobacco-related cancers across all ages and populations is critical to eliminating the suffering and death due to cancer. NCI investments in Fiscal 2006 will support:

Tobacco use prevention and smoking cessation research that addresses underserved and understudied youth and young adults.
Health behaviors research, including tobacco use, among medically underserved people who have survived cancer.
A tobacco and health disparities research network.
Research on effective State and community programmatic and policy interventions for tobacco control.
International research on tobacco control, prevention, and dissemination to benefit low- and middle-income nations.
Determination of the cancer risk potential of reduced-exposure tobacco products.
Studies to identify cellular targets and screen and develop agents to help smokers quit and prevent cancers in former smokers.
Population-based studies of cancer risk associated with tobacco, including molecular damage in former smokers.
Large-scale studies of highly lethal cancers, several of which are tobacco related.
A National Lung Screening Trial Image Library to optimize diagnostic programs.

Understanding and Promoting Energy Balance to Prevent Cancer

Compelling evidence suggests that excess body weight is a risk factor for many cancers. Body weight is determined by each individual's "energy balance," the complex interaction among diet, physical activity, and genetics over his or her lifetime. NCI's research goals include understanding the causes of adverse patterns of weight, physical activity, and diet; defining how these causes contribute to cancer; and applying this knowledge to prevent and control cancer. NCI investments in Fiscal Year 2006 will support:

Multidisciplinary research on patterns of diet and exercise among cancer survivors and in underserved populations.
Development of innovative approaches for prevention of obesity.
Studies to identify the molecular mechanisms of bioactive food components as modifiers of cancer risk and tumor behavior.
Studies to evaluate physiological changes influenced by dietary components in normal and cancerous processes.
Development of new technologies for assessing energy intake and balance.
Collection of behavioral information on dietary and environmental exposures in case-control and cohort population studies.

Overcoming Cancer Health Disparities

While Overcoming Cancer Health Disparities is one of our strategic investment areas for 2006, it is also emphasized in conjunction with other priorities.

Prevention, Early Detection, and Prediction investments include tobacco research and dissemination in low- and middle-income nations, studies to project the impact of cancer interventions in specific populations, and identification of markers of cancer risk and cancer progression in high risk populations.
Proposed Clinical Trials Integration includes increasing access to and participation of minority and underserved people in cancer clinical trials.
Molecular Epidemiology investments will expand the diversity of participants in consortia studies and support etiologic studies of minority groups and populations in transition.

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