History of MoSTRA

October 21, 1975 News Release

Tumor Registrars from hospitals throughout Missouri will attend a two-day meeting in Columbia to organize and name an association to serve members of this fast-growing specialty field. Approximately 75 tumor registrars have indicated they will attend.

The meeting will be educational as well as organizational, according to Mickie Savoy, RN, President Pro-Tem of the first session October 23-24 at Holiday Inn West. Mrs. Savoy is associate director of the Missouri Cancer Registry at the Cancer Research Center.

“The need to be recognized as a separate entity was realized long ago by hospital tumor registrars,” said Mrs. Savoy, “inasmuch as they are trained in selecting information from cancer patient’s charts and condensing it into a uniform abstract. These data are then compiled in the individual hospital-based tumor registry and then transferred to a central tumor registry.”

“Fortunately for the state of Missouri, there exists a statewide data base to which many Missouri hospitals submit their data” Mrs. Savoy pointed out. “Tumor data are collected by a central base-the Missouri Cancer Registry which operates under contract with the Division of Health through the Cancer Research Center – and are aggregated by statisticians, then passed on to other health care agencies and epidemiologists with the hope that this will enable them to discover the causes of certain types of cancer and ultimately, all types of cancer.”

Mrs. Savoy said, “that eventually, with the institution of more tumor registries in Missouri hospitals and participation of all Missouri hospitals with the central registry, all Missourians with cancer and future cancer patients will benefit.”

The goals of the Tumor Registrars’ Association will be to:

1. Promote research and education in tumor registry administration.
2. Establish standards of education for tumor registrars.
3. Raise the level of knowledge and performance of tumor registrars.
4. Disseminate information to members of the association regarding current activities, research and trends in the cancer field.
5. Initiate and/or participate in programs to improve and standardize the compiling of tumor registry information.
6. Seek liaison with professional and governmental organization which utilize data derived from tumor registries.

Several speakers, noted in their fields, are expected to discuss cancer registries and related subjects.

The Missouri tumor registrars will seek to join the National Tumor Registrars’ Association (NTRA) which was organized about a year and a half ago. To become a member of NTRA one must pass a certification examination now being developed by NTRA.