Dr Moon S. Chen Jr Explains the Far-Reaching Benefits of the California Cancer Registry

The large database of information contained in the California Cancer Registry is useful for both local clinicians and researchers around the world, as it allows them to compare cancer outcomes by a number of demographic characteristics, according to Moon S. Chen Jr, PhD, MPH, professor of hematology and oncology at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center and principal investigator of The National Center for Reducing Asian American Cancer Health Disparities.

Transcript (slightly modified)

Why is it important to gather epidemiology data in efforts like the California Cancer Registry?

We in California have been extremely fortunate to have had the California Cancer Registry. This is the oldest, largest cancer registry in the world in a contiguous area. The data have been collected for more than 25 years, and we, by legislation, track all cancer cases and we’re able to collect information on the first course of treatment, what happens to the patient, the kinds of survival outcomes that have occurred.

That has helped the individual provider by saying, I can go to the California Cancer Registry and see how people of the patients that I’m dealing with, by gender, by race, and so forth, even by geography in part of California: how have they done? What has been used before? Then compare my patient load to that situation and see what can be learned and what can be applied, what has worked and how does what I’m doing compare with what has been done in the past. I think that’s the major advantage of the California Cancer Registry to the individual.

To the nation at large or the world at large, it’s the opportunity to have so much diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, and so forth, to be able to see the potential outcomes and course for all these groups.