42 U.S.C. § 280e — National program of cancer registries

(a) In general. (1) Statewide cancer registries. The Secretary, through the CDC Director, may give grants to States. Instead of granting a State directly, the Secretary may also give a grant to, or contract with, an academic or nonprofit organization the State picks to run its cancer registry. This money supports statewide registries covering the whole population, which collect — for each condition listed in paragraph (2)(A) — data on: (A) basic facts about each cancer case; (B) the person's work and industry history, if that information is in the same record; (C) administrative facts, including the date of diagnosis and where the information came from; (D) medical facts describing the cancer, including where it is, its stage (based on the Staging Guide), how common it is, and the type of treatment given; and (E) any other information the Secretary decides is appropriate. (2) Cancer and benign brain-related tumors. (A) The conditions covered in paragraph (1) are: (i) every kind of cancer that is in place or has spread (except basal cell and squamous cell skin cancer), including cancerous brain-related tumors; and (ii) non-cancerous brain-related tumors. (B) For this paragraph: (i) A "brain-related tumor" is a listed primary tumor, cancerous or not, found in the brain, the membranes covering the brain, the spinal cord, the cauda equina, a cranial nerve, any other part of the central nervous system, the pituitary gland, the pineal gland, or the craniopharyngeal duct. (ii) "Listed" means the tumor appears on the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology, known as the ICD–O. (iii) The "International Classification of Diseases for Oncology" is a classification system — covering both where a tumor is and its cell type — built by the World Health Organization with international centers, to make cancer statistics comparable across countries. It supplements the general International Classification of Diseases (the ICD) and is the standard coding system cancer registries use worldwide. This term includes any U.S. version of that system, and any internationally recognized system that later replaces it. (C) Wherever this section mentions "cancer registries," it means the registries described in this subsection. (b) Matching funds. (1) The Secretary may only give a grant under subsection (a) if the State — or the academic or nonprofit organization the State picked to run its registry — agrees to contribute non-federal money toward the costs. This contribution, made directly or through donations, must equal at least 25 percent of the costs, or $1 for every $3 of federal money in the grant. (2) In figuring this non-federal contribution: (A) It can be cash or in-kind support — like equipment, land, or services — fairly valued. Money that came from the federal government, or services that the federal government paid for or subsidized to a significant degree, do not count. (B) For a given State, the Secretary can only count non-federal contributions above what the State was already spending to collect cancer data in the fiscal year right before its first grant year. The Secretary may lower the required non-federal amount if the State shows that keeping it would cause financial hardship. (c) Eligibility for grants. (1) The Secretary cannot make a grant under subsection (a) unless an application has been submitted and approved, in whatever form, manner, and with whatever supporting information the Secretary requires. The Secretary cannot approve an application unless it assures that the applicant will use the money only for the approved purposes, that it will set up proper financial controls and accounting to track the federal funds, and that it will comply with the peer review requirements in sections 289 and 289a of this title. (2) Before getting federal funds, each applicant must also assure the Secretary that it will: (A) set up a registry as described in subsection (a); (B) meet appropriate standards for how complete, timely, and high-quality the registry's data is; (C) publish a yearly report of the cancer data it collects; and (D) get state-law authority for the statewide registry, including rules that: (i) make sure hospitals and other facilities that screen, diagnose, or treat cancer patients fully report their cancer cases to the registry; (ii) make sure physicians, surgeons, and other health care practitioners who diagnose or treat cancer patients fully report their cases too, except for cases already reported by a hospital or facility that referred or admitted the patient; (iii) let the registry access all the relevant records held by doctors, surgeons, hospitals, outpatient clinics, nursing homes, and other providers, so it can identify cancer cases or learn about a case's or patient's characteristics, treatment, or status; (iv) require cancer data to be reported to the registry in the format, with the data points, and to the standards of quality, timeliness, and completeness the Secretary sets; (v) protect the confidentiality of all reported cancer data, including a ban on sharing anything that identifies, or could help identify, a cancer patient — except to other state cancer registries and to state and local health officers; (vi) allow confidential data, consistent with state law, to be shared with cancer researchers to help prevent, control, and study cancer; (vii) authorize the registry or others to run studies using its data, including studies of what causes cancer, evaluations of the cost, quality, and effectiveness of cancer-related diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and prevention programs, and other cancer research; and (viii) protect people who follow the law — so that no one can be sued in civil court just for reporting a cancer case to the registry, or for giving access to case information already provided to the registry. (d) How this relates to other programs. (1) This section does not replace or shrink the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program, known as SEER, which is run by the Director of the National Cancer Institute. (2) In places where both this program and SEER operate, the Secretary must make sure SEER's support is not replaced, and that any extra activities here follow the standards in subsection (c)(2)(C) and (D) and are properly coordinated with SEER. (3) The Secretary cannot move responsibility for running SEER away from the National Cancer Institute's Director. (4) To make federally supported efforts as efficient and effective as possible, the Secretary must coordinate the programs under this part with the cancer registry programs the federal government already supports. (e) A special rule for a breast cancer study. For a grant under subsection (a) to a State named in section 280e–3(b), the Secretary may set whatever conditions are necessary to help collect the data needed for the study required under that section.