Take Action for World Cancer Day
World Cancer Day is an international awareness day held every year on February 4. It’s a time when everyone — individuals, schools, advocacy organizations, government entities, hospitals, and communities ― can come together and take action to help reduce the global impact of cancer.
Help Close the Care Gap
This year’s theme, “Close the Care Gap,” is about understanding and recognizing the inequities in cancer care across the world. Despite innovation and advancements in cancer diagnosis, prevention, and treatments, disparities persist across the cancer care continuum, from screening to survivorship. Cancer disparities occur because of a host of factors, including systemic racism, geographic disparities, cost of care, and lower levels of prevention, screening, and early detection.
We are marking World Cancer Day with 3 simple activities you can do now to help close the gap in cancer care. These activities focus on the importance of cancer screening and the promise of new, innovative cancer screening tests, which could reduce disparities and save more lives by detecting cancer early.
Ready to help close the cancer care gap? Here are 3 things you can do now:
1. Learn about the importance of cancer detection and the promise of new screening innovation.
Cancer screenings save lives because early detection catches cancer early, when it is small, hasn’t spread, and might be easier to treat. However, early screening tests currently are recommended for only 5 cancers — breast, colorectal, cervical, lung, and prostate cancer. Most other types of cancer do not currently have screening tests available.
Scientific and technological breakthroughs are proving promising in terms of the ability to detect more types of cancer in new ways. One new and emerging screening test, called multi-cancer early detection tests, uses a person’s blood sample to identify more than 50 cancers. This new way to screen for many different types of cancer all at once could help detect cancer at earlier stages.
Multi-cancer early detection technologies hold tremendous promise in complementing existing cancer screening capabilities, reducing disparities, and saving more lives by detecting cancer early. A simple blood draw can be done in practically any medical setting, delivering screening opportunities to communities that have been traditionally underserved, including communities of color, rural areas, and tribal areas.
Get More Details About New & Emerging Screening Technologies
2. Share your own story about cancer screening and detection.
Was your or a loved one's cancer found early due to access to cancer screening tests? Or, was your or a loved one's cancer diagnosis delayed because you experienced barriers to accessing cancer screening tests?
Please tell us your story about your or a loved one's experience with cancer screening and early detection. By sharing your story, we can help spread the word about the importance of early cancer detection.
3. Ask your Members of Congress to support efforts to detect cancer early.
The creation of multi-cancer early detection tests and other new cancer screening tests is the first step toward saving more lives by detecting cancer early. People must be able to access, afford, and benefit from them. These tests are so new that there must be policy solutions to ensure that they are available to everyone.
CSC has joined other leading cancer and health equity organizations to urge Congress to support a bipartisan bill called the Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act (H.R. 1946/S. 1873). This bill would create a new coverage pathway, giving people on Medicare access to new, breakthrough screening technologies that detect cancer at earlier stages.
Will you take 2 minutes now to send a letter to your members of Congress asking them to support this important bill?
Thank you for partnering with us on these important issues as we mark World Cancer Day. Together, we can prove that Community is Stronger Than Cancer.