Lack of awareness of cancer symptoms, cancer risk factors, and erroneous beliefs about cancer may influence delay in presentation of cancer symptoms and thereby treatment outcomes. This paper refers cancer awareness population studies (mainly from the UK) and describes associations between elements of the Health Belief Model and cancer-related health behavior. Denmark is part of the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership which, inter alia, will examine whether differences in cancer survival across countries can be explained by different levels of cancer awareness and erroneous beliefs about cancer.