Improving cancer care for patients remains a high priority for Kaiser Permanente. Nearly 50,000 Kaiser Permanente members are diagnosed with cancer each year. The KP Research Bank has already supported important research to help identify how genetic and environmental factors impact cancer. Because of your contribution, scientists are able to use data from our KP Research Bank to better understand how to treat breast, prostate, lung, and many other cancers.
Currently, 64% of all cancer survivors in the U.S. have lived 5 years after their diagnosis and 40% have lived 10 years after being diagnosed. As of January 2019, there were an estimated 16.9 million cancer survivors in the United States. People who’ve been diagnosed with cancer live much longer after their initial diagnosis because of new research devoted to advancing cancer care.
The number of cancer survivors is expected to increase to 22.2 million by 2030, and 26.1 million survivors by 2040 (nearly 7% of the total population).
To build support for cancer research this year, we focused our outreach on Kaiser Permanente members who survived cancer and were not already taking part in the Research Bank. Before the outreach, there were nearly 70,000 people who joined the KP Research Bank who survived cancer. This year, an additional 22,000 members who have survived cancer joined the KP Research Bank. The more people that take part in the KP Research Bank, the more we can learn about other areas of cancer.
If you know someone who is a Kaiser Permanente member who has survived cancer, and not joined the KP Research Bank, please refer them to our website: www.kp.org/researchbank for more information about how they can help improve cancer care in the future.
