Cancer and Our Community

We are dedicated to serving the cancer-related needs of Vermont and New Hampshire. We do this through:

• Compassionate patient care
• Cutting-edge research
• Outstanding education and training, and
• Reducing the burden of cancer in our catchment area.

Our Community Outreach and Engagement (COE) team leads efforts to:

• Work with community partners to understand how cancer affects our population
• Support research to address community cancer issues and disparities
• Address cancer issues through outreach efforts

About our community

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New Hampshire and Vermont are greatly impacted by cancer. Compared with the United States, our community has a higher rate of new cancer diagnoses.¹ Cancers that occur more often here than nationally include bladder, brain and nervous system, breast, endometrial (uterine), esophageal, lung, melanoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and oral/pharyngeal cancers.¹ While our overall rate of cancer deaths is similar to the national rate, deaths from several cancers, including melanoma, are higher here.²

Every five years, our Community Advisory Board and other advisors review our region's cancer data. While all cancers matter to our research, education, and outreach work, some are more common or more serious in our community than elsewhere. We call these our catchment-focused cancers and give them extra attention. Our current catchment-focused cancers are:

• Bladder cancer
• Breast cancer
• Colorectal cancer
• Lung cancer, and
• Melanoma.

We're also watching prostate cancer closely as a growing concern in our community.

Learn about how we address these cancers through our research and outreach work in the community.

Contact us

To contact the COE team, please email DCC.Community.Outreach@dartmouth.edu. To reach specific team members, please visit our team member page.