Health Statistics & Data Management analyzes information from the reported records of new cancer cases and distributes statistical reports to government agencies and other requesting public and private organizations. The data is used to plan, administer and evaluate health and other programs.

HSDM receives the cancer data set from the NH State Cancer Registry (NHSCR). NHSCR currently collects reports from hospital registrars operating in all the large hospitals in NH.  Hospitals with relatively smaller caseloads of cancer (fewer than 100 cases per year) generally do not have their own cancer registry and  NHSCR staff help these hospitals with their reporting duties.  NHSCR also receives reports of cases from physician practices, free standing radiation oncology centers, out-of-state pathology laboratories and other sources, as required by NH Administrative Rules.  In addition, the NHSCR also receives reports for cases diagnosed in other states who are NH residents at diagnosis, based on agreements of information exchange with other states. Cancer data is collected in accordance with NH Administrative Rules.

Cancer became a reportable disease in NH in 1985, and since 1986, NHSCR has been charged to identify all new cases of cancer occurring among NH residents. DHHS has overall responsibility for NHSCR.  The roles of cancer registries in cancer control are to gather information about cancer in a community, provide the data needed to elucidate the causes of the many different cancers, and evaluate the programs to control cancers.  In general, the activities involved in cancer control through the utilization of cancer registry data include:

• assessment of cancer burden in the population,
• provision of data for epidemiological studies to investigate the risk factors associated with cancers,
• evaluation and planning of patient care services, and
• evaluation of early diagnosis and treatment programs.

The information collected for NHSCR includes:

• Personal information on cancer patients including their age, sex, race, ethnicity and residence, and
• Information on a patient's primary tumor and treatment including date of diagnosis, method of detection, topography, morphology, behavior, clinical extent, staging, metastases, multiple primaries, laterality and first course of treatment.

Cancer tends to develop over several years and often takes a significant amount of time to collect complete information on diagnosis, treatment and outcome. Cancer data are available 24 months after the close of a calendar year.  For example, data for 1999 became available in January 2002.  The most recent year of data available for analysis is the diagnosis year ending 1999.