Catchment Areas of NCI-Designated
Cancer Centers
This web-based application serves as a visualization tool for the geographically defined catchment areas of NCI-designated Cancer Centers. The 'catchment area' refers to the self-defined geographic area that each NCI-designated Cancer Center serves or intends to serve in the research it conducts, the communities it engages, and the outreach it performs.
NCI-designated Cancer Centers use geographic units (census tracts, zip codes, county or state lines, or other boundaries) to define the area from which the Cancer Center draws the majority of its patients, including the local area surrounding the Cancer Center. The catchment area provides a geographic scope for monitoring cancer trends, identifying pronounced socioeconomic- and health-related disparities, informing high impact translational science, and guiding the implementation of evidence-based interventions in clinical and community settings.
The status of 'NCI Designation' is awarded to Cancer Centers that receive the P30 Cancer Center Support Grant (CCSG), which is administered by the NCI Office of Cancer Centers. The P30 CCSG supports a diverse, nationwide network of cancer centers that meet rigorous standards of achievement in transdisciplinary, state-of-the-art research to prevent, detect, and treat cancer. For more information about the NCI Cancer Centers Program, visit cancercenters.cancer.gov.
This web-based application visualizes locations and geographic extent of 64 catchment areas of the 72 NCI-designated Cancer Centers, as of November 2023, their population estimates, and cancer mortality information. The seven NCI-designated basic laboratory centers are excluded because they are not required to identify a catchment area. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is also excluded because its unique mission is solely devoted to pediatric cancers. Although the NCI-designated University of Hawaii Cancer Center catchment area includes the U.S. Affiliated Pacific Islands, the statistics for the catchment population were reported using the state of Hawaii only, due to limitations of the underlying dataset. The web application will continue to evolve, geographically linking Cancer Centers’ catchment areas to publicly available data sources to aggregate sociodemographic and epidemiologic characteristics across the NCI Cancer Centers Program.
Please note: these visualization efforts are not NCI policy statements and should not be interpreted as such.
If you use the information provided by this application, please include the following citation, which describes the development of the NCI-designated Cancer Center catchment areas dataset:
DelNero PF, Buller ID, Jones RR, Tatalovich Z, Vanderpool RC, Ciolino HP, Croyle RT. A National Map of NCI-Designated Cancer Center Catchment Areas on the 50th Anniversary of the Cancer Centers Program. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2022 May 4;31(5):965-71. DOI: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-21-1230, PMID: 35101903
Datasets
Statistics available in this application were updated on May 22nd 2024 and are presented for download here:
- US Cancer Mortality (2018-2022) and Demographics (2018-2022) at Catchment Area aggregation (90KB .xlsx)
- US Cancer Mortality (2018-2022) and Demographics (2018-2022) at County level (2MB .xlsx)
You can also download the Catchment Area and US County shapefiles for use in your own projects:
- NCI Cancer Center Points Shapefile (28KB .zip)
- Catchment Area Shapefile (2.5MB .zip)
- US County Shapefile (12MB .zip)
The county dataset also includes and Urban-Rural designation based on the 2023 Rural-Urban Continuum Code provided by the USDA. Counties with RUCC 1-3 are displayed as Urban, while those with codes 4-9 are Rural. (Counties in Connecticut are displayed using 2013 Rural-Urban Continuum Code values because the 2023 data uses planning regions rather than Counties.)
NCI Designated Cancer Center List
The following is a list of the cancer centers included in the application. Type in the search box to limit the rows displayed. Click on a cancer center name to open the application zoomed to the corresponding catchment area.
- Abramson Cancer Center at University of Pennsylvania
- Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center
- Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine & Barnes-Jewish Hospital
- Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute at Wayne State University School of Medicine
- Case Comprehensive Cancer Center at Case Western Reserve University
- Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer at University of California Irvine
- City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center
- Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine
- Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center
- Dartmouth Cancer Center at Dartmouth Health
- Duke Cancer Institute
- Fox Chase Cancer Center
- Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center at Nebraska Medicine & the University of Nebraska Medical Center
- Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center at University of Washington Cancer Consortium
- Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
- Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of California at San Francisco
- Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University
- Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of Iowa
- Hollings Cancer Center at Medical University of South Carolina
- Huntsman Cancer Institute at University of Utah
- Indiana University Melvin & Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center
- Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of California at Los Angeles
- Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Cancer at NYU Langone Health
- Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
- Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University
- Markey Cancer Center at University of Kentucky
- Masonic Cancer Center at University of Minnesota
- Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center at Virginia Commonwealth University
- Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center
- Mays Cancer Center at UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
- Moffitt Cancer Center
- Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center (MECC) at Albert Einstein College of Medicine
- Moores Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of California San Diego
- Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of Southern California
- Oregon Health Science University Knight Cancer Institute
- O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of Alabama at Birmingham
- Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University
- Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center
- Rutgers Cancer Institute
- Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health
- Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University
- Stanford Cancer Institute at Stanford University
- Stephenson Cancer Center at University of Oklahoma
- Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of Miami Health Center
- The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center at James Cancer Hospital & Solove Research Institute
- Tisch Cancer Institute at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
- University of Arizona Cancer Center
- University of California at Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center
- University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center
- University of Colorado Cancer Center
- University of Florida Health Cancer Center
- University of Hawai'i Cancer Center
- University of Kansas Cancer Center
- University of Maryland Marlene & Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center
- University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center
- University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center
- University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
- University of Virginia Comprehensive Cancer Center
- University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center
- UPMC Hillman Cancer Center
- Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center
- Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University
- Yale Cancer Center at Yale School of Medicine
Additional Resources
These are links to external websites that provide localized, publicly available Cancer Center Catchment Area data and mapping tools:
- Cancer InFocus visualization platform tools, developed by the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center:
- University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center
- Jefferson Health Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center
- Fred Hutch Cancer Center
- University of Arizona Cancer Center
- University of Kansas Cancer Center
- Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute
- University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center
- Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University
- Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center
- Rutgers Cancer Institute
- Scan 360 from the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center
- California Health Maps from University of California, San Francisco
- Exploring Cancer in Colorado (ECCO) from the University of Colorado Cancer Center
Contact Us
Please contact usif you have information on these Cancer Centers or suggestions for the application.