The Division of Cancer Prevention (DCP) conducts and supports research to determine a person's risk of cancer and to find ways to reduce the risk. This knowledge is critical to making progress against cancer because risk varies over the lifespan as genetic and epigenetic changes can transform healthy tissue into cancer.

With an overall goal to detect such changes and intervene early in the cancer process to prevent symptomatic disease and death, DCP funds and provides support to clinical and laboratory researchers, community and multidisciplinary teams, and scientific networks.