A Partnership to Promote High Quality Breast Cancer Screening and Diagnosis
Since 1994, the Vermont Breast Cancer Surveillance System (VBCSS) has partnered with Vermont healthcare facilities and the Vermont Department of Health to capture screening and diagnostic breast imaging data, follow-up pathology and cancer registry data for women across the state of Vermont. The VBCSS provides a framework for quality improvement initiatives and research on breast cancer screening and diagnosis. The VBCSS is part of the The Office of Health Promotion Research in the Larner College of Medicine at UVM.
Since 2023, data collection efforts have been focused on a subset of radiology facilities in Vermont, including North Country Hospital, The University of Vermont Medical Center and their affiliates, Central Vermont Medical Center and Porter Medical Center. The VBCSS provides quality assurance services to the participating facilities to support quality improvement initiatives and ensure compliance with FDA and American College of Radiology requirements for mammography facilities. The VBCSS also partners with the Vermont Cancer Registry within the Vermont Department of Health to help ensure complete data capture of breast cancer diagnoses within the state.
The VBCSS data repository serves as a resource for scientists wishing to conduct statistical analyses of observational clinical data on breast cancer screening and diagnosis. We also serve as a sampling frame for identifying patients and breast cancer specimens of interest for new translational studies, survey studies, or other types of breast cancer research. The VBCSS contributes to collaborative national studies of breast cancer screening and diagnosis that focus on evaluating real-world performance of breast cancer screening and diagnosis. We are a founding member of the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC) and collaborate frequently with the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET). Through both consortia we engage in active research covering a wide variety of topics in breast cancer screening, diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship.