COEE and DCI scientists, in partnership with community partners and members, are actively engaged in research examining, monitoring and addressing the multiple causes of cancer disparities. These research studies are aimed at reducing the burden of cancer in communities in our catchment area and beyond.
Specific Aims:
Curate Duke Cancer Institute patient data to understand the needs of our patient population
Analyze NC Cancer Registry data to identify the burden of cancer in our catchment area and in NC
Examine the impact of social determinants of health in cancer outcomes in catchment area and NC
Examine the prevalence and trends in key cancer risk factors in key cancer risk factors in catchment area and NC
Be responsive to data needs and requests from community partners and DCI investigators using CREST infrastructure to interrogate cancer data in NC and/or catchment area
CREST Team Members
Tomi Akinyemiju
Associate Director of COEE, Professor of Population Health Sciences, Global Health, and Ob/Gyn
Donna Niedzwiecki
Director, DCI Biostatistics
Professor of Biostatistics & Informatics
Samantha M. Thomas
Principal Biostatistician
and Manager
DCI Biostatistics Shared Resource
Katie Capaldi
DCI CDST IT Analyst
Frances Wang
Senior Biostatistician
Yadurshini Raveendran
COEE Program Leader
CREST Frequently Asked Questions
The CREST Dashboard is a comprehensive, multilevel data warehouse that facilitates evaluation of the cancer burden and disparities in the Duke Cancer Institute (DCI) catchment area. CREST integrates data from the Duke Cancer Registry, Duke EHR, state cancer registries (NC, SC, VA), and contextual measures of social determinants of health (SDOH).
The DCI catchment area covers 104 counties, and a total population of 9.7 million individuals in NC (67 counties), SC (6 counties) and VA (31 counties).
All DCI members can access the CREST Dashboard to support their research or clinical efforts, however, users must login via DHTS vpn in order to access the dashboard. We are careful to maintain confidentiality and data security and to do so, any cell size less than 11 is suppressed to protect patient privacy.
Duke Health IRB has reviewed and approved the dashboard ( Pro00108416).
Please request access via the link here, and we will follow up with access instructions. To better understand the context for the dataset, we highly encourage completing the COEE Foundational Training.
The CREST team can be reached via email at dcicoe@duke.edu
The current DCI data available on the CREST Dashboard reflects data from 2014 to 2019. Once 2020 DCI data is available then, the census data from 2020 can also be incorporated and the dashboard updated.
Patient Demographics Tab – DCI Tumor Registry data
SDOH Maps Validation – National Cancer Institute Social Determinants of Health by US Census Tract Dataset – https://healthcaredelivery.cancer.gov/social-determinants/
Incidence and Mortality Maps and Graphs Tabs – Incidence and Mortality Data from NC, SC, and VA Tumor registries from 2014 to 2019.
All of the information obtained for the tumor registry is abstracted from the medical record and not self-reported.
The Dashboard provides a snapshot of our patients seen at Duke from 2014 to 2019, we urge caution in making projections beyond what is reflected in the dashboard.
All DCI members will have access to the final version of the dashboard within Duke, as long as they have passed the HIPAA compliance training and are able to get on the Duke VPN/are using an on-site device.
