Goals of the SEER Program
The goals of the SEER Program are to:
- Collect complete and accurate data on all cancers diagnosed among residents of geographic areas covered by SEER cancer registries.
- Conduct a continual quality control and quality improvement program to ensure the collection of high quality data.
- Periodically report on the cancer burden as it relates to cancer incidence and mortality, and patient survival overall and in selected segments of the population.
- Identify unusual changes and differences in the patterns of occurrence of specific forms of cancer in population subgroups defined by geographic, demographic, and social characteristics.
- Describe temporal changes in cancer incidence, mortality, extent of disease at diagnosis (stage), therapy, and patient survival as they may relate to the impact of cancer prevention and control interventions.
- Monitor the occurrence of possible iatrogenic cancers, i.e., cancers that are caused by cancer therapy.
- Collaborate with other organizations
on cancer surveillance activities, including
the CDC’s National
Program of Cancer Registries
and National
Program of Cancer Registries (NAACCR). - Serve as a research resource to the National
Cancer Institute providing for the
conduct of studies that address issues dealing with cancer
prevention and control
as well as Program and registry operations.
- Provide research resources to the general research community including a research data file each year, and software to facilitate the analysis of the database.
- Provide training materials and web-based training resources to the cancer registry community.