Goal of the program

Overall Objective: The over-all goal of this program of research is to determine the role of occupational exposures in lung cancer occurrence among residents of New Mexico. Our first step is to conduct a feasibility study by leveraging the New Mexico Tumor Registry (NMTR), a population-based cancer registry that is a member of the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program. Using the NMTR, we will identify and recruit lung cancer cases and then ask the participants to complete a detailed telephone interview. Given that lung cancer has an average one-year survival of approximately 45%, the patients must be approached fairly rapidly but in a careful and considerate manner. Therefore, the objectives of this case only study are to determine/estimate the:

1) feasibility of the recruitment method;

2) response percentage of lung cancer cases that agree to participate;

3) feasibility of successful completion of telephone interviews among this group of individuals undergoing cancer treatment;

4) prevalence of occupations represented among all lung cancer cases and by subgroups (e.g., by age, sex, race/ethnicity, etc.);

5) need and uptake of benefits counseling for possible compensation benefits.

This case-only feasibility study will provide the feasibility data and preliminary data necessary to design a population-based case control study. Ultimately, we aim to determine the population attributable risk for occupational lung cancer, and thereby establish the rationale to strengthen prevention and early detection strategies at the workplace.