Congratulations to the Missouri Cancer Registry and Research Center (MCR) for once again achieving Gold Certification through the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR). The MCR also achieved the 2024 NAACCR Registry of Distinction honor. 

To meet the Gold Standard for Registry Certification, registries must achieve the highest NAACCR standard for complete, accurate and timely data to calculate standard incidence statistics for the year reviewed.

Iris Zachary, director of the MCR, thanked various supporters and partners with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and the MU Department of Public Health.

For Gold Certification, a cancer registry’s data needs to meet the following criteria: 

• Case ascertainment has achieved 95% or higher completeness.
• A death certificate is the only source for identification of fewer than 3% of reported cancer cases.
• Fewer than 0.1% duplicate case reports are in the file.
• All data variables used to create incidence statistics by cancer type, sex, race, age and county are 100% error-free.
• Less than 2% of the case reports in the file are missing meaningful information on age, sex and county.
• Less than 3% of the cases in the file are missing meaningful information on race.
• The file is submitted to NAACCR for evaluation within 23 months of the close of the diagnosis year under review.

In addition, the MCR received the 2024 U.S. Cancer Statistics Registry for Surveillance award. The latest U.S. Cancer Statistics data — which includes all information collected in Missouri — is available through several interactive data visualization tools.