History of the Cancer Prevention Institute of California
In 1974, the deans of the medical schools at Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco joined with the American Cancer Society to form the Northern California Cancer Program to support clinical trials in Northern California. The organization's founders include: Clayton Rich, M.D., Stanford University; Julius Krevans, M.D., the University of California, San Francisco; Robert Murphy, American Cancer Society; B. J. Feigenbaum, Esq., Steinhart & Falconer; and Saul Rosenberg, M.D., Stanford University.
In 1987, the organization took over the National Cancer Institute's regional Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) cancer registry activities through its Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry. In 2002, we won support to expand this registry to its current 9-county Greater Bay Area catchment region. Since 2005, CPIC has partnered with Stanford to create a comprehensive regional cancer research and community outreach enterprise that achieved National Cancer Institute designation as a Cancer Center in 2007. As members of the (now known as Stanford Cancer Institute) Stanford Cancer Center's Population Sciences program, CPIC scientists also hold consulting faculty appointments at Stanford University's School of Medicine.
Over its 36 years of operation, CPIC has developed and implemented innovative cancer prevention research and outreach programs, in formal partnership with the Stanford Cancer Institute, to deliver a comprehensive arsenal for defeating cancer. It has grown and evolved from its original role of assisting with clinical trials of cancer drugs to serving as an asset to the nation’s leading cancer fighting organizations, including the National Cancer Institute, scientists worldwide, educators, patients, and clinicians. Today, the CPIC partners with independent scientists, academic institutions, and health organizations in the U.S. and around the world to examine the path of cancer through distinct populations. Most of the organization’s research activities are supported through federal and state government grants and contracts to study some aspect of cancer, either site specific cancers (such as breast cancer or prostate cancer) or cancers in specific populations (for example, low-income women of color, Vietnamese populations, or nail salon workers, for example). CPIC continues to operate the Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry, as part of both the National Cancer Institute SEER program and the California Cancer Registry. Major cancer prevention research findings from the CPIC, including those focused on breast cancer rates and risk, have drawn international attention. The organization is recognized as the first to have identified the markedly high rates of breast cancer in Marin County, California, in the 1990s. CPIC research was the first to correlate certain individual lifestyle factors, such as alcohol consumption, with cancer incidence in Marin and the first to document the dramatic decrease in breast cancer rates when hormone therapy use declined. More recently, in 2009, CPIC scientists demonstrated an increased risk for cancer among women exposed to secondhand smokeSmoke that comes from the burning of a tobacco product and smoke that is exhaled by smokers over their lifetimes. |
The Cancer Prevention Institute of California (CPIC) was founded in 1974 as the Northern California Cancer Program, in response to President Richard M. Nixon's avowed "war on cancer." By signing the National Cancer Act of 1971, Nixon strengthened the National Cancer Institute, marshalling resources to "plan and develop an expanded, intensified, and coordinated cancer research program encompassing the programs of the National Cancer Institute, related programs of the other research institutes, and other Federal and non-Federal programs.
Dr. Rosenberg, a Stanford 
In 2010, Northern California Cancer Center changed its name to the Cancer Prevention Institute of California to reflect its expanded geographical reach and renewed mission to prevent cancer and to reduce its burden where it cannot yet be prevented.
