Date: January 15, 2025

With the start of the new year, I am excited to share with you my aspirations for how we can work together to further our impact on reducing colorectal cancer (CRC) in 2025. But first, I want to share my immense gratitude with all of you for the ways in which you engaged with ACS NCCRT in 2024, bringing your commitment, creativity, and passion to our shared work to save lives from this disease.  

We saw phenomenal engagement from our ACS NCCRT members and partners in the past year. Not only did we welcome more new member organizations than ever before (26), but we hosted a record number of participants (250+) at our 2024 ACS NCCRT Annual Meeting held November 20-22 in Fort Worth, Texas. I’m proud to say that, all in all, nearly 1,000 individuals participated in our annual meeting and virtual programs combined. But if you were not able to participate in one or more of our programs last year, don’t worry! You can find 2024 webinar recordings and slides at our Resource Center. Annual meeting recordings and slides are housed on the 2024 meeting webpage. (Be sure to scroll to the bottom to see a gallery of photographs captured at the event!) 

As you know from our work over the past year, promoting timely, quality CRC screening remains a key initiative for ACS NCCRT. New data from the 2023 National Health Interview Survey presented in our always popular “What Do the Data Tell Us?” panel at the annual meeting indicates overall CRC screening among adults ages 45 and older increased by 8% between 2019 and 2023. And among 45–49-year-olds, we saw a very exciting 62% increase in this same time frame. However, we know that increasing timely, quality CRC screening is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to reducing overall deaths from this disease. 

As I shared at the annual meeting, the ACS NCCRT steering committee and national experts met in June 2024 to challenge ourselves to look at how we can better reduce mortality and mortality disparities related to CRC. We identified the following five areas of focus to guide our work in the upcoming years: 

As the longest active ACS national roundtable, it’s crucial that the ACS NCCRT understands the needs of our constituents and periodically reassesses our national priorities. We believe aligning our work around these five focus areas, while looking for additional ways to make an impact across the CRC continuum, will position us to have a significant impact on improving outcomes and reducing deaths related to CRC.   

In the near term, we hope you will register to join us for our first webinar of the year on February 5^th: Public Awareness Strategies to Promote Colorectal Cancer Screening. And please keep an eye out for registration for our annual Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month Webcast this March. 

Thank you for your dedication to our work to save more lives from CRC. We accomplished a lot together this past year and I look forward to working with you to make an even greater impact in 2025.