American Cancer Society
Please write a paragraph responding to the discussion bellow. Add citations and references in alphabetical order.
The website for the American Cancer Society (ACS) provides many resources to cancer patients and family members or caregivers. There is a link called “understanding your diagnosis” that can provide education on all of the tests required for cancer patients, the different stages of cancer, the treatments available for different types of cancer including clinical trials, and the side effects of these treatments. In addition to information on cancer, the ACS provides resources on coping with cancer, paying for treatment, and end of life care. This website is a great resource for someone who has a loved one and wants to learn more about what they are going through and why. I would recommend the services provided by ACS such as the caregiver resource guide, insurance and payment resources, the support programs based on cancer types, and the clinical trial websites provided.
Although increased cancer risks can be inherited from your genes, there are many controllable risk factors that the ACS identifies. According to research, tobacco use is among the leading cause of cancer deaths and also leads to many other chronic diseases (ACS, 2019). New programs are constantly emerging to help people quit such as prescription medicine and counseling. Besides tobacco, drinking alcohol and being overweight or obese, and nutrition are the other three main controllable risk factors that the ACS discusses (ACS, 2019). The ACS states that women should have no more than 1 alcoholic drink per day and men should have no more than 2 alcoholic drinks per day. Increasing the price and taxes on alcohol and tobacco may help decrease the amount of consumption in the U.S.. Increasing public awareness of the risk may also help decrease consumption. Being overweight or obese puts a person at risk for developing 13 different types of cancers (ACS, 2019). The current initiatives in America to prevent childhood obesity are beneficial to reducing risks for cancers because good habits will carry on into adulthood. Awareness has recently increased in the dangers of being inactive or sitting all day long. ACS also mentions eating more vegetables and less processed and red meats can lower your chances for getting certain types of cancers. Community initiatives and current health care policy changes have been working to try to increase access to healthy and affordable food (ACS, 2019).
On reviewing the research program, I found the programs that study cancer disparities to be very interesting. One program in particular develops a predictive tool for prostate cancer to reduce outcome disparity for African American men. The statistics state that African American men are two times as likely to get prostate cancer and 3 times more likely to die from it than European American men (ACS, 2019). Why is that? Kosj Yamoah, MD, PhD and his research team in Tampa, Florida, are working to make it easier for doctors to find prostate cancer by studying genetics found in prostate tumors. The end goal for this program is the hopes of gaining access to earlier treatment options and reducing health disparities among African-American men with prostate cancer (ACS, 2019).
American Cancer Society. (2019). Cancer Health Disparities Research. Retrieved from https://www.cancer.org/research/currently-funded-cancer-research/cancer-health-disparities-research.html
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