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 63 catchment areas of the 71 NCI-designated Cancer Centers, as of May 2021, 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 April 25, 2023 and are presented for download here:
- US Cancer Mortality (2016-2020) and Demographics (2017-2021) at Catchment Area aggregation (84KB .xlsx)
- US Cancer Mortality (2016-2020) and Demographics (2017-2021) at County level (1.9MB .xlsx)
You can also download the Catchment Area and US County shapefiles for use in your own projects:
- NCI Cancer Center Points Shapefile (27KB .zip)
- Catchment Area Shapefile (7MB .zip)
- US County Shapefile (12MB .zip)
The county dataset also includes and Urban-Rural designation based on the 2013 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.
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
- Albert Einstein Cancer Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine
- Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine & Barnes-Jewish Hospital
- Arizona Cancer Center at University of Arizona
- Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute at Wayne State University School of Medicine
- Case Comprehensive Cancer Center
- Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center 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
- Duke Cancer Institute at Duke University Medical Center
- Fox Chase Cancer Center
- Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center at Nebraska Medicine & the University of Nebraska Medical Center
- Fred Hutchinson/University of Washington Cancer Consortium
- Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University
- Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
- 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
- Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University
- Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health
- Markey Cancer Center at University of Kentucky
- Masonic Cancer Center at University of Minnesota
- Massey Cancer Center at Virginia Commonwealth University
- Mayo Clinic Cancer Center
- Mays Cancer Center at UT Health San Antonio, University of Texas Health Science Center
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
- Moffitt Cancer Center
- Moores Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of California San Diego
- Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
- 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 of New Jersey at Rutgers Biomedical & Health Sciences
- Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University
- 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 Miller School of Medicine
- 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
- UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of California at Davis
- UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of California at San Francisco
- UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
- University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center
- University of Colorado Cancer Center
- University of Hawai'i Cancer Center
- University of Kansas Cancer Center at the University of Kansas
- 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 Cancer Center
- University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center
- UPMC Hillman Cancer Center
- USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of Southern California
- Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center
- Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center
- Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University
- Yale Cancer Center at Yale University School of Medicine
Additional Resources
These are links to external websites which provide more information concerning Catchment Areas:
- Cancer InFocus Kentucky map tool
Contact Us
Please contact usif you have information on these Cancer Centers or suggestions for the application.