Sanford Watertown

The National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, is using $80 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to expand research benefiting patients at Sanford Cancer Center and the other 15 members of the NCI Community Cancer Centers Program (NCCCP) and to add 14 new sites to the network.

Sanford Cancer Center will receive $2 million in funding over two years to expand existing cancer research programming and patient services. This includes adding at least nine new staff members to support additional early (Phase I) clinical trials for cancer patients, increased outreach and education targeted at populations with cancer healthcare disparities (i.e. Native Americans, new immigrants and colony populations) and nurse care coordinators who will work with newly diagnosed patients and cancer survivors.

The NCCCP is a network of community-hospital cancer centers that is working to provide research-based cancer care spanning the full cancer continuum – from prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship through end-of-life care. The program is designed as a community-based platform to support basic, clinical and population-based research initiatives.

“While Sanford feels extremely fortunate to have been selected by the National Cancer Institute for this funding and all that it supports, the real benefactors are the people of this region who will see more cancer services in their communities,” stated Becky Nelson, Sanford Health-MeritCare Sr. Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. “We have a strong history of providing quality cancer care, and this funding will allow us to increase the care and services we provide to a level our patients would experience at very few cancer centers in this region.”

NCCCP began in 2007 with 16 hospital-based community cancer centers in 14 states. The expansion uses approximately $40 million of ARRA funds to support additional research opportunities within the original network of 16 NCCCP sites and another $40 million of ARRA funds to expand the network to include 14 new community cancer centers in eight new states.

The NCCCP is designed to create new research opportunities across the cancer continuum from screening and treatment to follow-up care, with an emphasis on minority and underserved populations. Expanding the NCCCP network will provide access to more patients in community cancer centers to support basic, translational, clinical, and population-based research toward effective new prevention strategies and treatments for cancer patients.

In addition, the program is studying ways for patients to have access to the latest, evidence-based care close to where they live. For a variety of reasons, many cancer patients cannot commute to major academic medical centers for treatment. In fact, 85 percent of patients are diagnosed, and receive at least their first course of treatment, at a community hospital.

NCCCP centers are addressing ways to reduce healthcare disparities, improve access to clinical trials, improve overall quality of care, promote an infrastructure to collect high-quality biospecimens such as blood and tissue samples for research, and to link with national computer networks that support research. The centers also work to improve survivorship, palliative care services, and patient advocacy.

For more information about the program and a map of the NCCCP network, see http://ncccp.cancer.gov

To learn more about Sanford Cancer Center, visit www.sanfordcancercare.org.