Community Corner

Avon, Avon Lake Residents Wanted for Historic Cancer Study

St. John Medical Center participating in major cancer study.

St. John’s Medical Center is helping the American Cancer Society celebrate its 100th birthday by locating local residents to help finish the fight against cancer.

The center is participating in the historic national Cancer Prevention Study-3 (CPS-3) that will give scientists a better understanding of cancer causes and prevention. The Society is looking for men and women between the ages of 30 and 65 with no personal diagnosis of cancer, aside from basal or sqaumous cell skin cancer. The overall study is seeking to enroll 300,000 people and will be conducted at several Cleveland-area medical centers in addition to centers across the United States and Puerto Rico.

On the west side of Cleveland, residents can enroll in the CPS-3 at St. John Medical Center on June 4 and June 6. Click here for other three locations in Cleveland.

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“By joining this study, people can literally help us save lives, giving future generations more time with families and friends, more memories, more celebrations, and more birthdays,” former Bay Village Mayor Tom Jelepis, a cancer survivor and co-founder of local organization Friends from the Start, said.

Signing up requires a one-time in-person visit to read and sign a consent form, complete a survey, provide a waist measure, and give a small blood sample, similar to a routine doctor visit. Participants will continue to receive periodic follow-up surveys in the future that researchers will use to look for more clues to cancer’s causes.

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One of the principal investigators of the study said results may help doctors understand why cancer occurs and how to prevent it.

“Many individuals diagnosed with cancer struggle to answer the question, ‘What caused my cancer?’ In many cases, we don’t know the answer,” Alpa V. Patel, Ph.D., principal investigator of CPS-3, said. “CPS-3 will help us better understand what factors cause cancer, and once we know that, we can be better equipped to prevent cancer.”

CPS-3 is the latest addition to the Society’s groundbreaking cancer prevention studies, which have been instrumental in helping identify major factors that can affect cancer risk. Researchers say CPS-3 holds the best hope of identifying new and emerging cancer risks. The study’s success depends on members of the community becoming involved. Researchers will use data from CPS-3 to build on evidence from earlier cancer prevention studies, which began in the 1950s and involved hundreds of thousands of volunteer participants.

“Among other findings, these cancer prevention studies have confirmed the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, demonstrated the link between larger waist size and increased death rates from cancer and other causes, and showed the considerable impact of air pollution on heart and lung conditions, said Radiation Oncologist Jon Prescott , MD “Changes in lifestyle over the past several decades as well as a better understanding of cancer make this latest chapter in this lifesaving series of studies a critical part of continuing the progress we’re seeing against the disease.”

Register online at www.ClevelandCPS3.org.


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