We can hear the collective groans just thinking about cancer and all the negativity, darkness and pain associated with it. We had the same reservations when deciding to tackle the disease in this year's issue, but cancer impacts us all. More than 1 million people in the U.S. are diagnosed with various forms of it each year and in Northeast Ohio alone 25,950 new patients sought treatment at our local hospitals in 2011*. But it's not all bad news, the American Cancer Society released a statistic earlier this year that the cancer death rate in America has decreased by 20 percent from its peak in 1991. We're getting closer to beating the disease every day, finding ways to outsmart it, prevent it, catch it early and fight back. Doctors across the country and those profiled on the following pages are spurring innovative procedures, new technology and promising research so one day we can say there is a cure for cancer.

*Most recent year for which verified figures are available