Reducing cancer health disparities is one of the key challenges for the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In 1989, former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Louis Sullivan, M.D., organized the NCI Black Leadership Initiative, and formation of a Hispanic and Appalachian Leadership Initiative soon followed in 1992.

In 2001, NCI formed the Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities to implement critical tasks in translating discovery into delivery. In 2005, NCI launched a new program to reduce cancer deaths among minority and underserved populations through $95 million in grants that will fund community-based projects in geographically and culturally diverse areas of the country. The new initiative, the Community Networks Program (CNP), is part of NCI's ongoing efforts to understand why some population groups -- often minorities and the poor -- have higher cancer rates than others, and to eliminate disparities by involving local communities in education, research, and training.

Cancer affects people of all racial and ethnic groups. An estimated 570,000 Americans are expected to die of the disease in 2005. However, a close look at cancer rates for racial and ethnic groups reveals some significant differences. Such differences have been described as health disparities. A National Institutes of Health (NIH) working group defined health disparities as differences in the incidence (new cases), prevalence (all existing cases), mortality (death), and burden of cancer and related adverse health conditions that exist among specific population groups in the United States.