What It Does

Cancer InFocus begins with a data gathering program known as CIFTools. This program receives a set of US counties as an input and uses that input to pull and filter data from numerous publicly available online sources, such as the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey, CDC Places, the FDA Certified Mammography facility list, and more (see available data sources here). Data is then processed into a standard format, organized by category and geographic level, and written to files for use.

After the data files are produced, they can be used independently or read into the Cancer InFocus Shiny application code (see below) to create an interactive mapping application. This application can be deployed online for use by anyone interested in better understanding the impacts of cancer where they live and work.

The generalized nature and rapid processing of these tools allows data and applications to be easily updated over time, making the workflow of characterizing the cancer burden in an area more efficient. Increased efficiency means less time spent gathering data and building tools and more time spent on working to improve cancer outcomes.

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How You Can Use It

There are two ways in which cancer centers and other interested parties can take advantage of the data gathering aspect of Cancer InFocus. Data has already been gathered and made available for download for the defined catchment areas of all NCI-designated cancer centers here . Additional cancer centers that are not NCI-designated can request to have their catchment/service areas added to this application by emailing ciodata@uky.edu.

Researchers can also request access to the code behind the data gathering process by filling out the following request form .

If a cancer center is interested in creating their own site-specific version of the Cancer InFocus interactive mapping application (example), they may do so through the completion of a no-cost licensing agreement with the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center. The licensing form may be obtained by emailing ciodata@uky.edu. Centers who license access to the Cancer InFocus Shiny application code will be responsible for deploying and maintaining their own versions of Cancer InFocus.

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Acknowledgments

This work was aided and inspired by the work of others seeking to emphasize the importance of cancer center catchment areas and assess the holes left to be filled. Two articles dealing with the geographic scope of US cancer centers were of particular importance to us: Assessing the Coverage of US Cancer Center Primary Catchment Areas (2022), by Leader, McNair et al. and A National Map of NCI-Designated Cancer Center Catchment Areas on the 50th Anniversary of the Cancer Centers Program (2022) by DelNero, Buller et al.

Citation

Justin Todd Burus, Lee Park, Caree R. McAfee, Natalie P. Wilhite, Pamela C. Hull; Cancer InFocus: Tools for Cancer Center Catchment Area Geographic Data Collection and Visualization. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2023; https://doi.org/10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-22-1319