National Survey Campaign
Overview
If we look at all of the grassroots efforts nationally that have been organized to understand the causes of cancer, a common thread has been a very local view of the nature of the problem. In any given community people tend to be more alike than different, which makes for a nice quality of life but makes it difficult to understand the basis for the causes of cancer.
We need to be able to compare and contrast the experiences of diverse communities and multiple populations when dealing with such an insidious disease; to ask the same questions of different groups of people in order to understand what is happening and why.
Thus, we are planning to nationally launch The Search for the Cause survey in fall of 2006. It will be the same survey tool that was developed by our research partners at the Family Health Outcomes Project at UCSF (FHOP) for our 2003 door-to-door survey.
The Goal
Our goal is for people all over the country to fill out the survey that will contribute to our understanding of the relationship between different kinds of exposures and who and who does not get cancer. In doing a broad unprecedented study like this, the results will have great benefits to understanding how our day to day behaviors impact our long term health, what we eat, the work we do, the products that we clean.
The Quest
To engage populations in counties across the nation, and around the globe, and ask them the same questions asked of our Marin population to compare and contrast lifestyle, occupation, environmental and geographic exposures and their consequences on our health. We will be able obtain a huge amount of research data in a finite period of time that may help unlock some of the mysteries around this disease.
The Outcomes
This single effort will advance population based cancer research in a way that couldn’t happen through traditional channels. The sheer numbers and diversity of the data we will obtain is without parallel in the history of cancer research.
The Sponsors
We are reaching out to a collective of sponsors who can help forward the momentum of this effort in a thunderous and visible way. Our partners will help to build out this project with their wisdom and expertise. The implications and outcomes of such a project with a team of major corporations could change the world.
Investigating how exposures
in daily lives increase the risk of cancer
Currently, we are in the process of collating survey data collected in a second door-to-door campaign. Once this data is processed by volunteers, FHOP will begin to analyze the results which will reveal new information about cancer in our community.