The Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance Program (CSP) is the population-based cancer registry for Los Angeles County. It identifies and obtains information on all new cancer diagnoses made among residents of Los Angeles County. The CSP was organized in 1970 and operates within the administrative structure of the University of Southern California (USC) School of Medicine. The CSP was initially a component of a laboratory-based viral oncology program and, as such, was part of the National Viral Cancer Program. It was developed with the voluntary cooperation of hospitals and other institutions, clinics, and medical laboratories equipped to diagnose cancer in Los Angeles County. By 1972, the registry became essentially population-based and complete incidence data for Los Angeles County are available from that year onward. To date, the CSP master file contains over one million records and some 35,000 incident cancers are added annually.

Since 1981, the CSP has been the designated legal agent of Los Angeles County for collecting information on all new cancer cases occurring among County residents for the purpose of monitoring cancer incidence patterns and trends. In 1987, it became the regional registry for Los Angeles County for the new California Cancer Registry. The CSP is one of eight such regional registries providing, as a group, statewide coverage. In September 1992, the CSP became the largest registry of the National Cancer Institute-funded Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. The consortium of 15 population-based SEER registries provides the federal government with a “snapshot” of cancer incidence and survival across the United States.

The CSP is one of the most productive cancer registries in the world, in terms of scientific contributions toward understanding the demographic patterns and the etiology of specific cancers. The CSP has a bibliography of more than 900 publications contributed to scientific journals. The registry supports a large ongoing body of research funded mainly by the National Cancer Institute.