April 2022
Vol 11 Issue 1
From the Editor
Happy National Cancer Registrar's Week! This year's theme: Cancer Registrars: Enhance Cancer Care One Data Point at a Time is a fitting tribute to all the work each of you do in collecting and ensuring the data is as complete, accurate, and timely as it can be. We dedicate this special edition of CHATs as a way to honor and express our appreciation of the hard work you do and to share some exciting news!
Rosemary Cress, Research Director, provides an important update on CRGC and introduces us to our new Director and SEER PI, Dr. Alain Monnereau.
Kyle Ziegler, Director, Data Management, shares his appreciation and an intriguing way of looking at the data that is collected by each of you.
In Data Quality Corner, Winny Roshala, Director, Quality Control and Reporting Facility Compliance Officer, and her staff share their thoughts and gratitude for your important work.
We hope you realize how important each of you are to the success of our registry and how the data we all collect and process will help improve cancer prevention and treatment. We appreciate the efforts of each of you in providing accurate, complete and timely cancer data. Thank you and Happy National Cancer Registrar's Week!
Stay healthy and safe!
Mignon
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Introducing Dr. Alain Monnereau
Rosemary Cress, DrPH, Research Director, CRGC
Throughout his life, Dr. Alain Monnereau has been passionate about learning. He became intrigued with medicine at an early age and earned his MD from the University of Bordeaux in 1998. While defending his thesis on lymphomas, he became intrigued with the idea of cancer registration to support research, He helped develop a population-based registry of hematologic malignancies in France and has served as its scientific director since 2002. This registry was the basis of his initial research into the risk factors for lymphoma. He now leads an international consortium to study lymphomas (InterLymph). To advance his growing interest in cancer research, Dr. Monnereau earned a PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health from the University of Paris in 2008. He and his wife came to California for a year in 2011 to work with Cancer Prevention Institute of California and Stanford University, so he knows the excellent California Cancer Registry and the US cancer research community. When the opportunity arose, he was eager to come back to California.
Dr. Monnereau lives in Arveyres France, near Bordeaux, in southwestern France. He is married to Nathalie, a pediatric nurse, and has two sons. Matthias, age 23, is studying epidemiology and biostatistics in Bordeaux with a goal of earning a Masters of Public Health. His younger son, Rodrigue, age 20, is currently studying art and culture in Paris. Dr. Monnereau enjoys all types of music (he plays the saxophone), literature (his favorite author is Blaise Cendrars), and yoga (he teaches Hatha Yoga).
Dr. Monnereau has now been working remotely with CRGC since the beginning of March, meeting with PHI and CRGC leadership and learning more about what we do. Everyone with whom he has met has appreciated his interest in their work and his gentle humor. He and his wife will be moving to California in June and we expect he will take over his new position as PI and Director of the Cancer Registry of Greater California in July. I am so excited that PHI has attracted such a highly qualified and passionate scientist to lead our wonderful registry to the next level.
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The CTR and the Two-hundred and Eighty
Kyle L. Ziegler, BS, CTR
Director Data Management
Cancer Registry of Greater California
Two hundred and eighty (280). Two hundred and eighty data items are required or required if available by the California Cancer Registry (CCR) for each cancer case reported by the reporting facility. There are many more data items if you count the “conditional”, “generated by facility”, and include data items that have come and gone over the years. In fact, if you look at the “California Cancer Registry Standards Volume II - 2021 Appendices” spreadsheet, there are over 900 data items listed. All this to point out, there are a lot of “data points” that registrars collect. Knowing what goes into collecting this information, such as screening an EMR or paging through a paper medical record (if that is done anymore) and considering the copious number of resources that must be referenced to abstract one (1) case; I am amazed we receive the number of cases each year on time as we do.
It may feel that new data items are added without forethought or concern of the CTR who needs to collect the information, but that is not accurate. There are a number of CTR's who have positioned themselves on national committees and boards and vocalize these concerns to those who propose data item changes. We here at CRGC certainly know this and acknowledge what this means for the greater CTR community that this will directly affect. We most certainly appreciate you!
The work that Cancer Registrars do benefit so many and is so important, words sometime cannot express the gratitude. Your work, dedication, and passion do not go unrecognized. You are very much appreciated! Happy National Cancer Registrars Week!
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Data Quality Corner
Winny Roshala, BA, CTR, CRGC Director of Quality Control and Reporting Facility Compliance Officer
On behalf of the Cancer Registry of Greater California (CRGC) Data Quality team, we want to recognize and honor cancer registrars during National Cancer Registrars Week (NCRW). Cancer registrars skillfully, diligently and comprehensively scour through the patient record to identify data regarding the patient’s cancer. Often the unsung heroes, cancer registrars are the “warriors” who quietly go about their business seeking all the important data elements to provide high data quality for researchers!
Thank you to the cancer registrars within the CRGC catchment area so very much for your continued professionalism, support and unwavering commitment to “enhance cancer care one data point at a time.” We couldn’t do it without you! We so appreciate and value the unique work you do.
CRGC will continue to provide you with support and inform you of educational opportunities as they arise to better prepare everyone to meet the cancer reporting challenges. We are all in this together and there is no doubt we will make it through this together! The work you do matters and as does our collective resolve to provide high quality data to ultimately benefit the cancer patient.
Thank you all and congratulations!
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If you have questions or concerns regarding any of the content of this CRGC communication please contact me.
Mignon Dryden, CTR
Director, E-Reporting
Cancer Registry of Greater California
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