Chapter 8: The FHCRC Lung Cancer Model

As a member of the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET), the lung cancer (LC) group at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) developed a model for evaluating U.S. lung cancer mortality trends and the impact of changing tobacco consumption. Model components include a biologically based two‐stage clonal expansion (TSCE) model; a smoking simulator to generate smoking histories and other cause mortality; and adjustments for period and birth cohort to improve calibration to U.S. LC mortality. The TSCE model was first calibrated to five substantial cohorts: British doctors, American Cancer Society CPS‐I and CPS‐II, Health Professionals’ Follow‐Up Study (HPFS), and Nurses’ Health Study (NHS). The NHS and HPFS cohorts included the most detailed smoking histories and were chosen to represent the effects of smoking on U.S. LC mortality. The calibrated TSCE model and smoking simulator were used to simulate U.S. LC mortality. Further adjustments were necessary to account for unknown factors. This provided excellent fits between simulated and observed U.S. LC mortality for ages 30–84 and calendar years 1975–2000. The FHCRC LC model may be used to study the effects of public health information on U.S. LC trends and the impact of tobacco control policy. For example, we estimated that over 500,000 males and 200,000 females avoided LC death between 1975 and 2000 due to increasing awareness since the mid 1950s of the harmful effects of smoking. We estimated that 1.1 million male and 0.6 million female LC deaths were avoidable if smokers quit smoking in 1965.