Ontario has new online tool to assess cancer risk

By Erin Stewart

BELLEVILLE – A new website has been developed to help Ontarians understand their risk of developing cancer and what they can do to lower their risk of the disease.

My Cancer IQ is the new tool to help people find out their risk of breast, cervical, colorectal and lung cancer.  The assessment asks you a variety of questions that may affect your risk of getting a specific cancer and takes about five to 10 minutes.

The risk category you are given when you complete an assessment is based on calculations relative to the population of Ontario and uses Ontario-specific data.

Alice Peter, the director of population health and prevention at Cancer Care Ontario, says they have had an excellent response to the website so far.

On Tuesday, the day My Cancer IQ was launched, “we had 17,000 hits on the website, and that was in one day,” Peter told QNet News.

Peter says that they are hoping the site will be a convenient way to help Ontarians change behaviour that is putting them at risk of getting cancer.

“We are pretty confident in saying that up to 50 per cent of cancer cases could be prevented if people engaged in healthier behaviours. So what we are really hoping with this is that people understand that they are in control of their own health.”

In related news, Feb. 4 is World Cancer Day and with that comes an announcement from the Ontario government.

Ontario is supporting cancer research by investing $6.4 million in the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research. The money is going towards the Health Services Research Program over four years.

The investment is helping the institute with new research involving increasing screening rates for colon cancer, decreasing toxicity for patients undergoing chemotherapy, and improving pain management for cancer patients.

Ontario has given a total of $756.9 million, including the announcement of today’s $6.4 million, to the institute since 2006.