Cancer prevention permeates the care you give your patients. Each time you talk with a patient about quitting smoking or help another design an exercise regimen he or she can stick with, you stand to make a dint in the hundreds of thousands of cancer-related deaths that occur annually in the United States. A new resource from the American Cancer Society can help you focus your cancer prevention and detection efforts to maximize benefit to your patients.
Of the projected 570,000-plus cancer deaths expected to occur in 2005, the American Cancer Society estimates that fully one-third are linked to modifiable lifestyle factors -- smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, poor nutrition and others -- problems many FPs counsel their patients about at each visit. Many more cancer deaths could be prevented through use of proper screening protocols.
Cancer Prevention & Early Detection Facts & Figures 2005 contains valuable information on the burden of disease, mortality rates and economic costs of such cancer risk factors as tobacco use, obesity, sedentary lifestyle and underutilization of established screening protocols.
This ACS resource also:
- identifies social, legislative and economic issues that influence individual behaviors affecting cancer risk,
- describes best practices to reduce tobacco use among youth and adults, and
- highlights successful community-based efforts to decrease tobacco dependence, increase physical activity and improve dietary patterns.
Most people are familiar with other publications produced by the society, said Vilma Cokkinides, Ph.D., program director for risk factor surveillance in the ACS department of epidemiology and surveillance research, especially the overall Cancer Facts & Figures document ACS publishes each year. The annual prevention and early detection volume, however, is less well-known, even among members of the medical community, she said.
"We really want to disseminate this information," Cokkinides stressed. "We would like to bring it to the same level (of prominence) as the annual Facts & Figures volume."
Clinicians may download copies of the prevention and early detection resource for free from the ACS Web site; multiple copies may be obtained by calling (800) ACS-2345 [227-2345].
