An academic and community partnership to fight cancer.
About SF CAN
Making a Collective Impact
A citywide collaboration dedicated to reducing the burden of cancer through prevention, early detection, research, and community partnership.
Our Mission
To reduce the inequitable burden of cancer for all San Franciscans by defining and supporting prevention and early detection for better outcomes, through research and community partnerships.
Why SF CAN?
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in San Francisco, and nearly half of all cancer cases in the city are breast, colorectal, liver, prostate, or tobacco-related cancers. These are the cancers where proven prevention, screening, and early detection strategies can make the greatest difference.
SF CAN brings together UCSF, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, healthcare systems, researchers, and community partners to focus collective effort where it can have the biggest impact. Because many of these cancers disproportionately affect historically underserved communities, advancing equity in prevention, screening, access to care, and outcomes is central to SF CAN’s work.
Meet Our Leadership
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Alan Ashworth, PhD, FRS
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SF CAN Founder
President, UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center Senior Vice President, Clinical Services, UCSF Health
Dr. Robert Hiatt, MD, PhD
SF CAN Founder and Director
Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, UCSF
Associate Director of Population Sciences, UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center
Nina Brown, MPH
Program Manager SF CAN
UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center
Cancer Trends in San Francisco
Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death in San Francisco, but encouraging progress has been made over the past several decades.
New cancer case rates and cancer death rates have both declined, with San Francisco showing greater improvements than California overall in recent years. These trends reflect decades of advances in prevention, screening, treatment, public health, and community collaboration.
Our Goals
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To build capacity so that health systems can sustain evidence- and community-based prevention and screening practices accessible to all.
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To focus efforts on the inequities associated with race/ethnicity, the environment, socioeconomic adversity and barriers to cancer prevention, screening and high-quality healthcare that contribute to disparities in cancer rates.
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To affect policy change through collaboration with government officials and community health advocates.
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To support and evaluate interventions focused on the application of evidence-based practices that reduce the burden of cancer in all populations and document and disseminate outcomes, in partnership with communities.
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To support on-going data collection systems that monitor process measures, outcome and impacts of SF CAN activities.
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To work based on a collective impact model that develops and advances promising community-based solutions, that are shared and can be used to extend this work to communities and health care systems across San Francisco, the Bay Area, and Northern California.
Research on the SF CAN Model
For more details about the organization, history, activities and successes of SF CAN, they are available in these publications:
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Hiatt RA, Sibley A, Venkatesh B, et al. From Cancer Epidemiology to Policy and Practice: the Role of a Comprehensive Cancer Center. Curr Epidemiol Rep. 2022;9(1):10-21. doi:10.1007/s40471-021-00280-7
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Hiatt RA, Sibley A, Fejerman L, et al. The San Francisco Cancer Initiative: A Community Effort To Reduce The Population Burden Of Cancer. Health Aff (Millwood). 2018;37(1):54-61. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2017.1260