This research project on cancer and the environment aims to improve Canadian understanding of the links between cancer risk, known risk factors (like smoking and obesity), and environmental hazards. This will be done by developing, deploying and testing a comprehensive, standardized geographic information system (GIS) for assessing these relationships at larger and smaller scales of geography. It will generate a broad array of results and information products in a timely fashion that will be useful to researchers, practitioners, policy makers and the public. New and powerful methods will be used to process huge volumes of geographically classified data, and sophisticated statistical approaches will be used for mapping and spatial analysis. The seed funding requested in this proposal will allow cancer patterns to be better understood for one region of south-western Ontario, leading ultimately to implementation in other regions across Canada.

This grant is funded by the Environment-Cancer Fund^TM. Thank you to Read for the Cure for their financial contribution to this project.