Control Plans Help States Fight Cancer Locally

Extract

In 1999, only six states had a blueprint to reduce the cancer burden in their regions by improving primary prevention, early detection, and the quality of treatment. By this summer, the District of Columbia, several tribal organizations, and every state except Oklahoma and Alaska had approved their own comprehensive cancer control plan.

These documents are as diverse as the areas they represent. Some have independent funding and are already being implemented. Delaware, for example, has established a fund that pays for cancer treatment for residents who can't, even though its plan is relatively new. Others plans are, at this point, little more than elaborate to-do lists that have not been acted upon.

What the control plans have in common is that they ask their citizens—everyone from the schoolhouse nutritionist and rural physician to local businesses and priority-setting state legislators—to participate in a collective push against cancer.

These plans represent a reversal in how many view effective cancer control. Rather than directing efforts to reduce cancer incidence and mortality from the national level, experts now believe these efforts are best tackled at the local and regional level, with guidance and limited “prime the pump” funding from the federal government. They have seen how successful locally driven cancer control initiatives can be, such as the grassroots movement to adopt local workplace smoke-free ordinances.