American Cancer Society, California Division, Inc.

Nationwide community-based voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by preventing cancer, saving lives and diminishing suffering from cancer through research, education, advocacy and service.

Why do we exist?

The American Cancer Society is the nationwide community-based voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by preventing cancer, saving lives, and diminishing suffering from cancer, through research, education, advocacy and service.

Our organization is unique insofar as we are nationwide in scope but locally present, that our body of work encompasses cancer in all of its myriad forms, and that we are active in areas of risk reduction, prevention, early detection, state-of-the-art treatment, and tangible services to patients and caregivers.  No other cancer-fighting organization is so ever present and so multi-faceted.

What have you accomplished?

No matter who or where you are, we can help.  Californians benefited from American Cancer Society's free information, programs and services nearly six million times last year.

The Society is the largest private, nonprofit source of funding for scientists studying cancer. Last year, the Society invested $100 million in peer reviewed cancer research nationwide.  Here in California, we are currently funding 128 grants valued at $56,049,364.

Since 1946, the Society has invested over $2.5 billion in cancer research. Thirty- eight researchers to whom we provided funding early in their careers have later won the Nobel Prize.

The Society has been involved in virtually all of the past century's major cancer breakthroughs: Curing childhood leukemia with combination chemotherapy; identifying smoking as a cause of cancer; detecting cervical cancer with the pap smear; using mammography to screen for breast cancer; treating breast cancer with lumpectomy and radiation; and using the PSA test to screen for prostate cancer.

The Society's Epidemiology and Surveillance Research Center has designed and monitored the largest and most credible studies in the world that associate cancer incidence with lifestyle choices.  These studies comprise the bulk of our knowledge of what causes cancer, and what helps to prevent cancer.

	How do you help people in my community?		Why do you need my support?
	How can I be sure that you will use my money wisely and won't waste it?		Can I Volunteer? How?