Impact of Energy Balance on Cancer Disparities


Book Description

​​​​This volume reviews disparities in cancer genetics, etiology, treatment and survivorship that are associated with differences in energy balance and how those differences and disparities may be affected by geography, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, biology, behavior and others. State-of-the-art strategies are outlined to alter these problems at the individual, community and policy levels. The book provides a comprehensive assessment of the multiple contributions of disparities in energy balance and how they affect cancer. this volume should constitute a valuable resource to disparity focused investigators at all levels and serves an important guide to professionals that deal with these issues, especially those who determine and implement policy.




Communities in Action


Book Description

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.




Energy Balance and Obesity


Book Description

Understanding the relationship between energy balance and obesity is essential to develop effective prevention programs and policies. The International Agency for Research on Cancer convened a Working Group of world-leading experts in December 2015 to review the evidence regarding energy balance and obesity, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries, and to consider the following scientific questions: (i) Are the drivers of the obesity epidemic related only to energy excess and/or do specific foods or nutrients play a major role in this epidemic? (ii) What are the factors that modulate these associations? (iii) Which types of data and/or studies will further improve our understanding? This book provides summaries of the evidence from the literature as well as the Working Group's conclusions and recommendations to tackle the global epidemic of obesity.




Strategies for Team Science Success


Book Description

Collaborations that integrate diverse perspectives are critical to addressing many of our complex scientific and societal problems. Yet those engaged in cross-disciplinary team science often face institutional barriers and collaborative challenges. Strategies for Team Science Success offers readers a comprehensive set of actionable strategies for reducing barriers and overcoming challenges and includes practical guidance for how to implement effective team science practices. More than 100 experts--including scientists, administrators, and funders from a wide range of disciplines and professions-- explain evidence-based principles, highlight state-of the-art strategies, tools, and resources, and share first-person accounts of how they’ve applied them in their own successful team science initiatives. While many examples draw from cross-disciplinary team science initiatives in the health domain, the handbook is designed to be useful across all areas of science. Strategies for Team Science Success will inspire and enable readers to embrace cross-disciplinary team science, by articulating its value for accelerating scientific progress, and by providing practical strategies for success. Scientists, administrators, funders, and others engaged in team science will also leave equipped to develop new policies and practices needed to keep pace in our rapidly changing scientific landscape. Scholars across the Science of Team Science (SciTS), management, organizational, behavioral and social sciences, public health, philosophy, and information technology, among other areas of scholarship, will find inspiration for new research directions to continue advancing cross-disciplinary team science.




Physical Activity and Cancer


Book Description

This book explores in depth the relation between physical activity and cancer control, including primary prevention, coping with treatments, recovery after treatments, long-term survivorship, secondary prevention, and survival. The first part of the book presents the most recent research on the impact of physical activity in preventing a range of cancers. In the second part, the association between physical activity and cancer survivorship is addressed. The effects of physical activity on supportive care endpoints (e.g., quality of life, fatigue, physical functioning) and disease endpoints (e.g., biomarkers, recurrence, survival) are carefully analyzed. In addition, the determinants of physical activity in cancer survivors are discussed, and behavior change strategies for increasing physical activity in cancer survivors are appraised. The final part of the book is devoted to special topics, including the relation of physical activity to pediatric cancer survivorship and to palliative cancer care.




Diet and Health


Book Description

Diet and Health examines the many complex issues concerning diet and its role in increasing or decreasing the risk of chronic disease. It proposes dietary recommendations for reducing the risk of the major diseases and causes of death today: atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases (including heart attack and stroke), cancer, high blood pressure, obesity, osteoporosis, diabetes mellitus, liver disease, and dental caries.




Cancer Navigation


Book Description

"Being poor is a health risk (Wells et al., 2019). When we wrote Poverty and Place, Cancer Prevention among Low Income Women of Color (2019), we demonstrated the potent forces of poverty and place and the prevalence of cancer among low-income women of color. That initial volume was the inspiration for this volume, entitled Cancer Navigation: Charting the Pathway Forward for Low Income Women of Color. In Poverty and Place, we had academics and researchers in mind. Our purpose was to examine how and why racial and class disparities have become potent forces in health and longevity rates in the United States. Conducting original research drawn from North City St. Louis, Missouri and the river city of East St. Louis, Illinois, we sought to understand the combination of factors that facilitate or pose a barrier to cancer treatment and adherence, for marginalized low- income women of color"--




The Heterogeneity of Cancer Metabolism


Book Description

Genetic alterations in cancer, in addition to being the fundamental drivers of tumorigenesis, can give rise to a variety of metabolic adaptations that allow cancer cells to survive and proliferate in diverse tumor microenvironments. This metabolic flexibility is different from normal cellular metabolic processes and leads to heterogeneity in cancer metabolism within the same cancer type or even within the same tumor. In this book, we delve into the complexity and diversity of cancer metabolism, and highlight how understanding the heterogeneity of cancer metabolism is fundamental to the development of effective metabolism-based therapeutic strategies. Deciphering how cancer cells utilize various nutrient resources will enable clinicians and researchers to pair specific chemotherapeutic agents with patients who are most likely to respond with positive outcomes, allowing for more cost-effective and personalized cancer therapeutic strategies.




Energy Balance and Prostate Cancer


Book Description

This volume provides a comprehensive treatise on the latest studies linking prostate cancer with energy balance, which together constitute a major challenge and opportunity for research scientists and clinicians especially those dealing with the expanding population of older men confronted with obesity and associated comorbidities. This volume should be a valuable resource to physicians, oncologists, urologists, endocrinologists, nurses, nutritionists, dieticians, and exercise therapists dealing with men with energy balance issues and/or questions regarding the linkage between energy balance and cancer. Moreover, this volume should serve as an important resource for cancer researchers especially for scientists studying lifestyle modification and prevention strategies to better understand and disrupt the linkage between obesity and cancer.




Geospatial Approaches to Energy Balance and Breast Cancer


Book Description

Cancer occurs in specific places and spaces, each of which have identifiable geographic coordinates, characterized by unique natural, built and social characteristics, all of which contribute significantly to cancer across the spectrum from etiology through diagnosis, treatment and outcomes. In the first volume of this series, published in 2010, a single chapter was focused on these geographic influences. Since then, the field of geospatial studies of cancer prevention and control has exploded in approaches and applications. Accordingly, this volume focuses on what has now become a very specific research endeavor, Geospatial Factors Impacting Breast Cancer. The book provides important insights into this relatively new and rapidly developing field. It should be of value to all students of the Energy Balance & Cancer Series and a wide-ranging introduction to problems in cancer prevention and control for geographers, demographers and other researchers with a geospatial perspective. Moreover, it provides important information for all oncologists, endocrinologists, and behavioral modification professionals to better understand their patients in the context of their environment. It should also provide important considerations for physicians, scientists, public health professionals and disparity investigator planning clinical trials, community interventions and community planning.