Cancer and Primary Care is the theme of the new issue of Family Medicine and Community Health (FMCH), an international peer reviewed medical journal with editorial offices in China and the US.

The Autumn 2015 issue includes four original research articles on cancer, one systematic review on global health and two papers focusing specifically on health care in China.

Authors contributing to this issue come from diverse institutions, including the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University; Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore; Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland; the Indian Institute of Public Health, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India; ACON Primary Care Research Center, Hangzhou, China and the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Cancer is a disease that affects many people regardless of race, economic status, gender or age.

This special issue of FMCH, coordinated by Li Li MD, PhD, Professor of Family Medicine, Epidemiology, and Biostatistics, and Mary Ann Swetland Endowed Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Case Western Reserve University, looks at cancer screening, treatment, survivorship, access to care, and global health.

The featured work in this issue is an original research article entitled "Stool DNA-based versus colonoscopy-based colorectal cancer screening: patient perceptions and preferences".

As stated by authors Matthew V. Abola, Todd F. Fennimore, Marcia M. Chen, Zhengyi Chen, Ashutosh K. Sheth, Gregory Cooper and Li Li, colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths, and nonscreening accounts for most of these deaths.

Among all colon cancer deaths, a significantly higher proportion of patients are African American.

The authors investigated if patients' perceptions of the stool DNA test differ according to race and other patient characteristics.

Source: Compuscript LTD