21st Century Cancer Research: At the Crossroads between Clinical and Population Sciences

On Monday, November 23, 2015, the George Washington University and ICF International are bringing together two experts – Dr. Eduardo Sotomayor, director of the GW Cancer Center, and Dr. Robert Croyle, a division director at the National Cancer Institute – to discuss how the complementary research areas of clinical and population science have jointly improved cancer outcomes.

Taken together rather than separately, clinical and population sciences provide a knowledge base that more efficiently translates research into policy and practice. More effective health outcomes are the result of clinical cancer research that focuses on medical insights drawn between the lab and the clinic regarding new treatment plans, pharmacology, and molecular biology. At the same time, population science is alleviating the cancer burden with research that focuses on cancer control through effective monitoring of individual and collective behavior.

More than one million people in the United States get cancer each year, and it remains our nation’s second leading cause of death with over 580,000 deaths annually. Cancer also imposes enormous direct and indirect costs--from an estimated $90B cost burden per year in direct medical treatment costs to the less quantifiable emotional costs associated with the cancer continuum of prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment, survivorship, and end-of-life care.