Launching an Interactive Cancer Projects Map: A Collaborative Approach to Global Cancer Research and Program Development

Abstract

Program/Project Purpose: Globally, 70% of cancer deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, but these countries receive only 5% of the resources expended by institutions and individuals for cancer care. Outreach efforts of institutions and individuals working to address cancer inequalities in these countries suffer due to a lack of collaboration among on-site groups and difficulty in accessing available resources regarding ongoing projects. In many cases, this leads to duplication of efforts and waste of resources. Information about outreach efforts in the global cancer care community is dispersed in the databases of the individual groups pursuing the projects, and thus, it is not easily accessible to the cancer care community at large. In order to address the need for a centralized, updated, and easily accessed repository of information about existing cancer-related projects worldwide, we developed the Global Cancer Projects Map (GCPM). The GCPM is a user friendly, comprehensive, online display of cancer research projects and outreach programs on an interactive world map. The platform was developed as collaboration between the Global Oncology, Inc. (GO), and the National Cancer Institute's Center for Global Health (CGH). Structure/Method/Design: The GCPM is designed for the ease of use by public health professionals, researchers, medical personnel, and trainees. The users can search for collaborators and projects by cancer types and countries, visualize information pertinent to each project on an interactive world map, and initiate contact with on-site project managers. Details of a project include investigator and on-site collaborators' institutional and governmental affiliations, cancer type studied, and the institution funding the project. The users can also overlay heatmaps of epidemiological measures that provide a representation of burden of cancer by country and cancer type. These disease- and country-specific measures include disability adjusted life years, mortality, incidence and prevalence rates, and Human Development Index. Outcomes & Evaluation: The map is being tested to improve usability, which includes navigation, intuitiveness, and accessibility. The website will be available to the public in March of 2015. Feedback from the public, usage data such as number of hits and amount of time spent on the website will be collected and analyzed. Analysis of this data will help identify additional issues that need to be addressed and generate ideas for future improvement. Going Forward: The next version of the GCPM aims to include databases from key partner organizations that GO and the CGH have identified. The partner organizations are projected to include the Union for International Cancer Control and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. It is GCPM's goal to allow all collaborators around the world to submit their cancer-related projects to catalyze comprehensive and equitable sharing of cancer resources.