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The Four Fields of Research

The Four Fields of Research

In order to fully conquer this devastating disease, we as advocates and members of the general public, need to encourage innovative scientists to study cancer at its most fundamental level. To eradicate cancer, research in diverse fields needs to be conducted simultaneously and collaboratively.

The more we understand the research process, the more support we can bring to those carrying out this research.

We will begin our discussion on how research is studied by naming the four primary fields of study in research. Later in this section, we will go into much more depth so you have a working knowledge about each field and the role it plays.

As we move in our discussion topics from left to right on the arrow schematic below, (from basic research to epidemiology), we increase the relevance of the research performed in that field to people. Both clinical and epidemiological research directly involves people.

However, each type of research is informed by research done in the field shown to the left in this visual. To a lesser extent, there are insights from more applied research (the areas on the right) that inform basic research. In other words knowledge learned loops back. More than 100,000 scientists and clinicians worldwide are engaged in some aspect of cancer research.