A National Map of NCI-Designated Cancer Center Catchment Areas on the 50th Anniversary of the Cancer Centers Program.

Background: In 1971, the National Cancer Act created a process to recognize the leadership, facilities, and research efforts at cancer centers throughout the United States. Toward this goal, each NCI-designated cancer center defines and describes a catchment area to which they tailor specific scientific and community engagement activities.

Methods: The geographically defined catchment areas of 63 NCI-designated comprehensive and clinical cancer centers are collated and presented visually.

Persistent Poverty and Cancer Mortality Rates: An Analysis of County-Level Poverty Designations.

Background: Cancer mortality is higher in counties with high levels of (current) poverty, but less is known about associations with persistent poverty. Persistent poverty counties (with ≥20% of residents in poverty since 1980) face social, structural, and behavioral challenges that may make their residents more vulnerable to cancer.

Methods: We calculated 2007 to 2011 county-level, age-adjusted, and overall and type-specific cancer mortality rates (deaths/100,000 people/year) by persistent poverty classifications, which we contrasted with mortality in counties experiencing current poverty (≥20% of residents in poverty according to 2007-2011 American Community Survey).

Advancing Rural Cancer Control Research: National Cancer Institute Efforts to Identify Gaps and Opportunities.

Cancer mortality rates are approximately 8% higher in rural populations and mortality rates are falling more slowly in rural communities, resulting in widening rural-urban health disparities in the United States. The NCI has a long history of supporting health disparities research, including research to understand the health needs, strengths, and opportunities in rural communities. However, the portfolio analysis described in this article underscores the need to significantly accelerate rural cancer control research in partnership with state and local communities.

Key milestones during 40 years of behavioral medicine at the National Institutes of Health.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has played a major role in promoting behavioral medicine research over the past 40 years through funding, review, and priority-setting activities and programs including scientific conferences, meetings, workgroups, intramural research, and training opportunities. In this review of NIH activities in support of behavioral medicine over the past four decades, we highlight key events, programs, projects, and milestones that demonstrate the many ways in which the NIH has supported behavioral and social sciences research and advanced the public health while contributing to the evolution of behavioral medicine as a scientific field.

Population Health Assessment in NCI-Designated Cancer Center Catchment Areas.

In May 2016, the NCI announced supplemental funding for NCI-Designated Cancer Centers to conduct research to better characterize populations within cancer center catchment areas. The initiative was intended to support primary data collection efforts to better define and describe cancer center catchment areas using a multilevel population health framework. The long-term goal was to facilitate collaborations in which researchers, providers, public health practitioners, and nonprofit organizations could utilize the data to develop or expand applied cancer control research, planning, and implementation, with an emphasis on local health disparities and communication inequalities.

The conception of the ABCD study: From substance use to a broad NIH collaboration.

Adolescence is a time of dramatic changes in brain structure and function, and the adolescent brain is highly susceptible to being altered by experiences like substance use. However, there is much we have yet to learn about how these experiences influence brain development, how they promote or interfere with later health outcomes, or even what healthy brain development looks like. A large longitudinal study beginning in early adolescence could help us understand the normal variability in adolescent brain and cognitive development and tease apart the many factors that influence it.

Making the Case for Investment in Rural Cancer Control: An Analysis of Rural Cancer Incidence, Mortality, and Funding Trends.

Unlabelled: Estimates of those living in rural counties vary from 46.2 to 59 million, or 14% to 19% of the U.S.

Risks and opportunities for psychology's contribution to the war on cancer.

This special issue of American Psychologist reviews a broad, diverse, and growing research literature that has established the discipline as an essential source of evidence concerning cancer prevention and control. Nevertheless, the history of psychological science that is intended to inform cancer control suggests a number of risks going forward that could attenuate the impact of this work. Fortunately, the field also faces new opportunities to contribute more substantially, especially if psychologists engage the broader biomedical and public health communities through rigorous, relevant, multilevel research that is informed by current knowledge of the disease and its treatment, the skills required to participate in large-scale trans-disciplinary team science, and an appreciation of the economic, organizational, and policy context of cancer control at the local and national levels.

Realizing the promise of social psychology in improving public health.

The theories, phenomena, empirical findings, and methodological approaches that characterize contemporary social psychology hold much promise for addressing enduring problems in public health. Indeed, social psychologists played a major role in the development of the discipline of health psychology during the 1970s and 1980s. The health domain allows for the testing, refinement, and application of many interesting and important research questions in social psychology, and offers the discipline a chance to enhance its reach and visibility.

Medicine. Spatial turn in health research.

Developments in geographic science and technology can increase our understanding of disease prevalence, etiology, transmission, and treatment.

Transforming epidemiology for 21st century medicine and public health.

In 2012, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) engaged the scientific community to provide a vision for cancer epidemiology in the 21st century. Eight overarching thematic recommendations, with proposed corresponding actions for consideration by funding agencies, professional societies, and the research community emerged from the collective intellectual discourse. The themes are (i) extending the reach of epidemiology beyond discovery and etiologic research to include multilevel analysis, intervention evaluation, implementation, and outcomes research; (ii) transforming the practice of epidemiology by moving toward more access and sharing of protocols, data, metadata, and specimens to foster collaboration, to ensure reproducibility and replication, and accelerate translation; (iii) expanding cohort studies to collect exposure, clinical, and other information across the life course and examining multiple health-related endpoints; (iv) developing and validating reliable methods and technologies to quantify exposures and outcomes on a massive scale, and to assess concomitantly the role of multiple factors in complex diseases; (v) integrating "big data" science into the practice of epidemiology; (vi) expanding knowledge integration to drive research, policy, and practice; (vii) transforming training of 21st century epidemiologists to address interdisciplinary and translational research; and (viii) optimizing the use of resources and infrastructure for epidemiologic studies.

Future health applications of genomics: priorities for communication, behavioral, and social sciences research.

Despite the quickening momentum of genomic discovery, the communication, behavioral, and social sciences research needed for translating this discovery into public health applications has lagged behind. The National Human Genome Research Institute held a 2-day workshop in October 2008 convening an interdisciplinary group of scientists to recommend forward-looking priorities for translational research. This research agenda would be designed to redress the top three risk factors (tobacco use, poor diet, and physical inactivity) that contribute to the four major chronic diseases (heart disease, type 2 diabetes, lung disease, and many cancers) and account for half of all deaths worldwide.

The Scientific Foundation for personal genomics: recommendations from a National Institutes of Health-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention multidisciplinary workshop.

The increasing availability of personal genomic tests has led to discussions about the validity and utility of such tests and the balance of benefits and harms. A multidisciplinary workshop was convened by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to review the scientific foundation for using personal genomics in risk assessment and disease prevention and to develop recommendations for targeted research. The clinical validity and utility of personal genomics is a moving target with rapidly developing discoveries but little translation research to close the gap between discoveries and health impact.