T he North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR), formerly the American Association of Central Cancer Registries, was formed in 1987 to create registration standards and to provide a forum for the promotion and advancement of registry activities. The NAACCR's activities have grown to include not only the establishment of standards for data collection and use, but also education and training, registry certification, data evaluation and publication, and promotion of cancer registry data use in research. As part of this effort, the utility of a national cancer database was recognized. In 1992, the first call for data from participating cancer registries resulted in a rudimentary data file of information regarding cancer cases from various parts of the U.S. This national data collection effort has increased each year and in 2001, 49 central cancer registries in the U.S. (of a possible 56) and all 12 registries in Canada participated in data submission. Approximately 52% of the U.S. population is covered by 1 of the 27 registries determined by NAACCR to have highquality data for the period 1992-1997.
The NAACCR Cancer in North America (CINA) files allow for the evaluation of cancer patterns by Ͼ 30 demographic and clinical variables. The unprecedented size of the file, which includes information for Ͼ 653,000 cases submitted from registries meeting national standards of high data quality, provides extensive opportunities for research on cancer incidence patterns that would not otherwise be possible. This supplement represents one area of research produced from this resource. A description of the NAACCR file data elements can be found in the Table 1. No additional data collection or pathology verification were conducted.
Purpose of the Supplement
Ovarian cancer is relatively uncommon, and therefore to our knowledge little has been published concerning racial or ethnic variations in ovarian cancer incidence or mortality. As the U.S. population becomes more diverse, the interest in health problems and disparities in outcomes among minority and economically disadvantaged groups increases. To address this issue, NAACCR received funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct a descriptive study of ovarian cancer. NAACCR formed a research group from interested representatives of organization members (the Ovarian Cancer Research Group). The group analyzed race-related and ethnicity-related variations in ovarian cancer incidence and outcome. In this supplement, we focus on epidemiology, pathology and classification issues, multiple primary tumors, staging, and incidence and 2615