Canadian Cancer Society releases new national strategy for improving cancer data collection
CTV
The Canadian Cancer Society has released a new strategy for collecting data on cancer in Canada, one that they hope will address serious gaps in our knowledge of this deadly disease in Canada.
The Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) has released a new strategy for collecting data on cancer in Canada, one that they hope will address serious gaps.
It’s the first national health strategy to focus on cancer-specific challenges, according to a press release from CCS, who worked with the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer to create the strategy.
The goal is to enhance the collection of data on cancer in Canada in order to better inform policies around health care for cancer patients across the country.
“Data provides critical information that helps focus cancer research, shape the delivery of cancer prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment and services, and inform policies that affect the health of people in Canada,” Dr. Stuart Edmonds, executive vice president of mission, research and advocacy at CCS, said in the release. “Given the tremendous impact data has on cancer care experiences and outcomes for people facing the disease, we embedded patient and caregiver perspectives throughout the strategy.”
The leading cause of death in Canada is cancer. According to the report, more than 230,000 people were estimated to have been diagnosed with cancer in 2022, with 85,000 estimated to have died of it.
Without proper data collection, we won’t be able to understand the scope of the issue — or the potential strategies that could help us combat cancer in Canada, according to the report.
Authors say this new cancer data collection strategy is designed to work in concert with the Pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy (pCHDS), which was compiled by the Public Health Agency of Canada in 2020 in response to some of the issues in health-care data collection revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
