Contact:

Martin L. Brown, Ph.D.
Chief, Health Services and Economics Branch
Applied Research Program
Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences
National Cancer Institute
6130 Executive Blvd, Rm. EPN-4005
Bethesda, MD 20892-7344
Phone: 301-496-5716
Fax: 301-435-3710
Email: mb53o@nih.gov

Objective of Project:

The goal of this initiative is to generate new economic knowledge that will promote the optimal design of cancer prevention and control trial studies and interventions and will facilitate the formulation of effective health care policy related to cancer prevention and control. NCI has an interest in economic and health services studies with particular emphasis on meeting the goals of the NCI Quality of Cancer Care Initiative (http://plan.cancer.gov/public/quality.htm) The overall goal of this initiative is to enhance the state of the science on the quality of cancer care and inform federal decision making on care delivery, coverage, and regulation. This initiative requests research applications on new methods development, the synthesis and extension of existing methods, and innovative data gathering strategies. Applications that propose to implement actual data collection on a pilot or full-scale basis as well as analytical studies that use existing data and methodology may also be submitted.

Description of Project:

This initiative supports research directed at increasing our understanding of economic aspects of cancer prevention, screening and care. Cancer is a heterogeneous chronic disease, which requires innovation in treatment and care approaches. Studies proposed in response to this initiative will be expected to address these issues and propose innovative methods.

Examples of research topics that would be considered relevant to meeting the goals of this initiative include:

1. The economic burden to the individual cancer patient, family and society resulting from cancer and cancer treatment, including time costs, reduced employment opportunities and reduced access to health and life insurance.

2. Economic factors at the individual, community and health system level that effect access to and outcomes following the use of cancer-related prevention, screening, diagnostic and treatment services.

3. The cost and organizational structure of delivering cancer prevention, screening and treatment services in relation to various health care delivery settings and health care market structure conditions.

4. Cost-utility, cost-effectiveness or cost-benefit of specific cancer prevention and screening trials and cancer prevention and control interventions.

5. The interaction of cost, cost-effectiveness and other factors in decision making process related to the provision and delivery of cancer prevention, screening and treatment at the physician-patient, health system and health policy levels.

6. The role of economic factors and financial incentives in determining the level of participation of patients, physicians and health care delivery systems in cancer prevention, screening and treatment clinical trials.

7. The identification, development and validation of data resources needed to support relevant and generalizable economic evaluation studies related to cancer prevention, screening and treatment.

8. Methodological studies on the measurement, evaluation and presentation of data on cost and cost-utility/effectiveness/benefit in relation to cancer specific issues.