Overview
The Cancer Epidemiology, Prevention and Control (CEPC) Program aims to acquire new information regarding cancer risk and to evaluate the effectiveness of new cancer control methods. Both aims stress the careful and systematic development of new techniques, whether for measuring environmental exposures, determining personal cancer susceptibility, or detecting early cancer. The CEPC Program includes two interacting groups of investigators, representing two major areas of focus. The Epidemiology Group studies human cancer etiology in terms of defined environmental exposures and genetically determined personal susceptibilities. The Epidemiology Group includes investigators with particular interests related to those physiologic factors and associated measures that mediate risk for the common reproductive and hormone-related malignancies, i.e., ovary, breast, and prostate cancer. The Prevention and Control Group evaluates and validates cancer intervention strategies. The Prevention and Control Group includes investigators with particular interests related to early colorectal and lung cancer detection, by means of screening flexible sigmoidoscopy and low-radiation-dose helical chest computed tomography, respectively.
The CEPC Program combines special expertise in (1) epidemiologic methods for evaluating new laboratory-based cancer biomarkers and for studying risk factor-disease associations in naturally occurring human populations and (2) community-directed methods for implementing and evaluating novel cancer prevention interventions in specially constituted research population. The Program organizes cancer epidemiologists, cancer control clinicians, behavioral scientists, and laboratory scientists, who together have access to unique population groups, intervention methodologies, or laboratory measures. Program membership includes representatives from departments of epidemiology, medicine, environmental and occupational health, human genetics, and behavioral and community health.