Comprehensive Cancer Control Plans: A powerful policy tool for state resources for public health programs

Comprehensive Cancer Control (CCC) is a collaborative process through which cancer control partnerships pool resources to promote cancer prevention, improve cancer detection, and increase access to health and social services to reduce the burden of cancer. States, tribes and territories have developed CCC plans to serve as blueprints for coordinated action. Cancer plans differ greatly (n = 55) but all address prevention to end-of-life care and will likely cost billions of dollars to implement. An important outcome of CCC activities is demonstrating policy change. This presentation will share information on targeted initiatives to assure there are appropriate resources to fund CCC plans, including guidance on creating a budget for priority CCC plan components. By June 2009, CDC and its collaborating partner organizations will ensure that every CCC coalition has a budget for their plan and 50% of these coalitions will be acquiring resources for implementation of their plan. Two complementary initiatives strive to meet this goal. CDC leads the effort to develop tools and guidance for CCC coalitions to acquire the needed resources to implement CCC plan activities. C-Change's initiative focuses on funding CCC and tobacco plans through state tobacco product taxes or other state revenue, by uniting cancer and tobacco control efforts and assisting CCC coalitions with developing a budget for CCC plans. Through the collaborative work of C-Change, CDC, national partner organizations and CCC coalition entities, a number of states have been successful in obtaining state resources for public health programs and/or creating policy change in the state.