Cancer prevention is a cornerstone of MD Anderson’s mission to eliminate cancer. MD Anderson is supporting community-led efforts to empower people to make healthy lifestyle choices and reduce their risk for cancer.

Be Well Communities™ is a place-based strategy for cancer prevention and control, working with communities to promote wellness and stop cancer before it starts. Be Well Communities unites individuals, schools, workplaces, government agencies, health care providers and policy-makers to plan and carry out sustainable, community-led solutions that will make positive, long-lasting changes in people’s lives.

Be Well Communities is an initiative of the Cancer Prevention and Control Platform, within the Moon Shots Program®. MD Anderson serves as the backbone organization to support Be Well Communities with three major goals:

• Engage the community in an ongoing dialogue about the importance of healthy behaviors
• Advance community-based strategies to promote health and wellness
  
• Increase engagement in healthy behaviors to reduce cancer risk in five key areas:
  • Tobacco control
  • Physical activity
  • Diet
  • Ultraviolet radiation exposure
  • Preventive care

Be Well Communities brings decades of cancer prevention and control expertise from our leading experts to communities. MD Anderson is responsible for:

• Envisioning the initiative
• Empowering the community
• Executing the initiative through funded collaborating organizations
• Evaluating the success of the initiative
• Creating an exit and sustainability plan to transition the initiative to the community