Mary Ann Sens
UND’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences teams up with the North Dakota Department of Health to establish a powerful new cancer sentinel
The University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences, in a new collaboration with the North Dakota Department of Health, has been awarded a five-year, $1.65 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to operate the North Dakota Statewide Cancer Registry — a cancer early warning system for the state.
The purpose of the registry, established in 1997, is to monitor cancer trends, promote research, increase survival, guide policy planning, and respond to cancer concerns from patients or the public. But the wealth of data compiled often would lie useless until analyzed and translated.
In February, the Department of Health reached out to the UND Medical School to help run the registry. The Health Department knew that UND’s Department of Pathology already maintains an invaluable tissue bank used to research specific cancers and that UND’s Center for Rural Health (CRH) has strong ties with North Dakota’s hospitals as well as expertise in analyzing cancer statistics.
“UND will collect and organize the data so it can be used for public health monitoring as well as research studies,” said Mary Ann Sens, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Pathology and department chair, who will serve as the program director. “Additional goals of the registry are to establish that cancer treatment in North Dakota is equitable, prompt and meets national standards.”
Lucy Zheng and Xudong Zhou, both from the Department of Pathology, and Kyle Muus from the CRH will specifically investigate cancer clusters, which are the incidences of specific cancers within a group of people, a geographic area or a period in numbers much greater than expected by chance alone.
“This is another example of the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences providing needed infrastructure for the state and maintaining a strong collaboration with the North Dakota Department of Health,” Sens said. “The registry ultimately serves all North Dakotans by providing accurate cancer data.”
In the 1990s, realizing the need to more effectively track cancers and chronic diseases, the CDC set up a system where all states report cancer statistics to be used for public health studies, research and to establish evidence for the effectiveness of treatments.
To aid participation, the North Dakota Legislature requires all hospitals, laboratories, physicians and other health care providers to report all newly diagnosed or treated cancer patients to the North Dakota Statewide Cancer Registry. Information in the registry is highly secure, and patients are never identified.
Additional information on the North Dakota Statewide Cancer Registry can be found at: ndhealth.gov/cancerregistry/about/about.htm
Denis MacLeod