Abstract Purpose: American cancer centers supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) must ensure that their research addresses the cancer relevant needs and risks of members of their catchment area. In 2016, the NCI supported catchment area assessments. This is the first study to describe a cancer center catchment area cancer risk evaluation, focusing on tobacco use and lung cancer screening. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2017 with 1,005 residents within a Philadelphia cancer center catchment area to identify the rate and correlates of smoking and rate of lung cancer screening. Results: The rate of current smoking in the catchment was 13%. Current smokers were more likely to have depression/anxiety, less likely to be eating healthy, more likely to use e-cigarettes, and endorsed lower perceived health and higher cancer fatalism, vs. former (27%) or never smokers; 74% of smokers want to quit smoking, but two-thirds think nicotine dependence medications are unsafe and ineffective, which may be addressed with personalized treatment. E-cigarette use was 11% and lung screening rates were < 30%. Conclusions: These results indicate that addressing tobacco use in the cancer center’s catchment may require targeting comorbid psychiatric conditions and additional cancer risk behaviors such as poor diet, modifying cancer beliefs that may undermine cessation, and utilizing novel methods to promote utilization of evidence-based treatment for smoking. E-cigarette use should be targeted, as well as identifying methods to promote lung screening. This study shows how a cancer center can identify catchment area needs to plan research that reduces the burden of cancer among their residents.
Keywords: smoking; lung cancer screening; catchment area

Abstract Cancers identified by the uncontrolled proliferation of the TRPV6 mRNA biomarker, kill African-Americans (AAs) at nearly twice the rate of Whites. Malignancies assigned to this class include: Metastatic prostate cancer, triple negative breast cancer, colorectal and multiple myeloma. This ecological model identifies the cause as an ethnic-specific haplotype of the TRPV6 calcium ion channel, which is also proto-oncogenic. This ancestral TRPV6a variant has been shown in several studies to be more calcium absorbent than the non-African/European TRPV6b allele. AAs inherited strong bones from their low-calcium consuming (200-400 mg/day) Niger-Kordofanian West African ancestors. However, AAs are maladapted to the high calcium (1,000+ mg/day) food environment of the U.S. As a consequence, the ancestral TRPV6a allele can become invasively oncogenic when over-exposed to excess free calcium ions, leading to the aforementioned class of cancers.
Keywords: ecological model; proto-oncogene; metastatic cancers; African-Americans