NCI Designated Cancer Centers: What they are, where they are

Good cancer treatment centers can be found throughout the United States, particularly in metro areas or so-called college towns like Ann Arbor, Michigan or Oxford, Mississippi. Getting quality cancer care may not always be easy, but it will be available.

Yet the bar is raised and the stakes are higher for people with any type of cancer that’s rare, difficult to treat, or advanced to stage 3 or 4. In those cases, it’s important to know about NCI-Designated Cancer Centers. As part of the National Institutes of Health, NCI (National Cancer Institute) is the federal government’s principal agency for cancer research and training.

Getting treated at an NCI-Designated Cancer Center gives patients a kind of “insider access” to the latest treatments and to oncology teams with a deeper pool of knowledge because of their research focus and diverse clinical experience. That’s why I would encourage anyone with cancer complications like metastasis to seek treatment at one of these facilities. To be clear, NCI designation is not a must-have for receiving high quality care. But with Stage 4 and other complex cancers, I see it as another valuable tool in fighting this disease.

NCI Cancer Center Locations

I placed a star in each state (plus the District of Columbia) that has one or more NCI-Designated Cancer Centers. These facilities tend to be concentrated in cities and heavily populated states like California, New York, and Texas. California alone has eight.

For more details on the above locations, click on the button below to go directly to the relevant page at the NCI website.

NCI designation: Nice to have, but not a must have

For many if not most cancer patients, it may not be worth the effort of getting to an NCI Cancer Center. Excellent local and regional medical centers can be found in every state. U.S. News publishes independent reports and rankings of hospitals, including centers dedicated to treating cancer. The button below will take you directly to the current, relevant page on their website.

Yet my focus at Stage 4 Living is people with advanced stage and difficult to treat cancers. If that includes you, I have two recommendations regarding treatment at NCI-Designated Cancer Centers:

• If you live within a reasonable distance and your medical insurance allows it, I would most definitely seek treatment at one of these centers. This includes people living in most major US cities. You will be in a facility that treats a high volume of cancer cases and gain easy access to clinical trials and doctors who are involved in (or on top of) the latest research.
• If getting regular treatment at one of these centers is not practical or simply not possible, consider getting a second opinion or consultation from one of them. Many, including MD Anderson in Texas, offer virtual second opinions or a review of scans and test results. According to the Anderson website, their pathologists review tens of thousand of outside pathology diagnoses, biopsies and resections each year.

I hope this information has been useful. I wish you much strength and good fortune as you begin or continue your treatment journey.