Cancer centers don’t usually ask NCI to increase their catchment areas. That’s because including more people and more square miles means increasing the responsibility to show impact.
This has changed in recent months, as two institutions in the West, acting separately, took on greater catchment areas, thus enabling the network of NCI-designated cancer centers to reach patients in areas that were previously not served:
Huntsman Cancer Institute has added four states—Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. With these states added to its former catchment area, the State of Utah, Huntsman now has the largest land area of any cancer center, which accounts for 17% of the U.S. land mass. (Only the University of Hawaii has a larger catchment area, though most of that is water.) Fred Hutchinson/University of Washington Cancer Consortium has added the entirety of eastern Washington, and is considering adding the State of Alaska. “Certainly, other cancer centers have changed catchment areas in the past, but this is much bigger than the modest changes in the past,” NCI Director Ned Sharpless said to The Cancer Letter.
