CEO Cancer Gold Standard™: An Investment in Your People
The CEO Cancer Gold Standard is a comprehensive, workplace-based program that enables employers to take concrete action to fight cancer among their U.S. employees and their families.
Cancer is a national epidemic and it’s affecting your workforce and the U.S. economy.
- Nearly 1.5 million new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed in 2009 and of those, 562,340 individuals are expected to die.
- Cancer is the second most common cause of death in the US, exceeded only by heart disease.
- The risk is high. In the U.S., men have slightly less than a 1 in 2 lifetime risk of developing cancer; for women, the risk is a little more than 1 in 3.
- The National Institutes of Health estimate the overall costs of cancer in 2008 at $228.1 billion including direct medical costs as well as the cost of lost productivity due to illness and premature death.
With its emphasis on prevention, early detection and quality care, the Gold Standard can help save the lives of your employees and curb costs.
- All cancers caused by cigarette smoking and heavy use of alcohol could be prevented completely.
- About one-third of the 562,340 cancer deaths expected to occur in 2009 will be related to overweight or obesity, physical inactivity, and nutrition and thus could also be prevented.
- Tobacco use is the number one cause of cancer and the number one cause of preventable death throughout the world.
- Most cancers are linked to a few controllable factors – tobacco use, poor diet, lack of exercise, and infectious diseases.
- Finding cancer at its earliest, most treatable stage gives patients the greatest chance of survival.
All statistics are from the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Facts and Figures 2009 (www.cancer.org)