New Orleans, LA – Dr. Vivien Chen, Professor of Public Health and Director of the Louisiana Tumor Registry at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, has been awarded a grant totaling $794,091 over three years to develop a system to rapidly collect and report pediatric cancer cases at the local, state, and national levels. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded the grant.
LSUSHC's Louisiana Tumor Registry will collaborate with state pediatric organizations and the pediatric oncology community to capture the cases rapidly. Key partners include the LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans Pediatric Oncology Program which practices at Children's Hospital in New Orleans (where about 50% of new Louisiana pediatric cancer cases are diagnosed and/or treated), as well as St. Jude-affiliated-clinics in Louisiana, and large out-of-state children's hospitals. LSUHSC's registry will also expand upon its cancer data on children and young adults by linkages with secondary data sets.
"This new database will be a valuable tool for local, state, and national researchers as well as health and policy professionals working to control cancer in children and save lives," notes Dr. Chen.
The purpose of LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans' Louisiana Tumor Registry is to collect complete and high quality cancer data and compile timely statistics so that data-driven, evidence-based cancer prevention and control programs can be implemented in the state to reduce illness and death from cancer. The Louisiana Tumor Registry was transferred from the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to LSU Health Sciences Center in 1995. Under LSUHSC's leadership it has become one of only 17 population-based cancer registries in the United States designated as SEER program registries by the National Cancer Institute. The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute is the authoritative source of information on cancer incidence and survival in the United States.
This grant is the second awarded to LSUHSC's Louisiana Tumor Registry since December 2010, and brings its federal support to about $3.5 million a year.
LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans educates Louisiana's health care professionals. The state's academic health leader, LSUHSC consists of a School of Medicine, the state's only School of Dentistry, Louisiana's only public School of Public Health, the only School of Nursing within an academic health center in Louisiana, and Schools of Allied Health Professions, and Graduate Studies. LSUHSC faculty take care of patients in public and private hospitals and clinics throughout the region. In the vanguard of biosciences research in a number of areas in a worldwide arena, the LSUHSC research enterprise generates jobs and enormous economic impact. LSUHSC faculty have made lifesaving discoveries and continue to work to prevent, advance treatment, or cure disease. To learn more, visit http://www.lsuhsc.edu and http://www.twitter.com/LSUHSCHealth.