Fennell receives NIH award for Community Cancer Centers Program
Mary Fennell, professor of sociology and community health, has been awarded the National Institutes of Health (NIH) 2009 Director’s Award. The honor recognizes her exemplary leadership in developing and implementing the National Cancer Institute’s Community Cancer Centers Program (NCCCP) to enhance community-based cancer care and research. She received the award during a presentation in Bethesda, Maryland, on July 29.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI), the largest institute of the NIH, leads the nation’s research efforts to discover better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer. In 2007, NCI launched NCCCP as a three-year pilot program to extend the reach of NCI’s cancer research into more U.S. states, cities, and towns. The NCCCP program has 16 community hospital cancer centers in fourteen states, with a special focus on reaching minority and underserved patients. The NCCCP program sites serve 27,000 newly diagnosed cancer patients each year. Plans are underway to expand the program.
“NCCCP is a public-private partnership of unusual scope,” Fennell said. “It combines resources from both the NCI and from each pilot site community hospital. The goals of the NCCCP range from decreasing disparities in access to clinical trials, to assessing the ability of community cancer centers to engage in tissue sampling, tissue analysis, adoption of electronic medical record systems, and linking to the Cancer Bio-Informatics Grid.”
Fennell’s involvement with the NCCCP program began in 2006, when she was appointed by the NCI as chair of the Evaluation Oversight Committee for the program. She also chaired the Evaluation Committee, which selected the sites for the pilot program.
Fennell serves as a Brown employee attached to the NCI under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) Mobility Program that enables the temporary exchange of skilled employees between NIH components and institutions of higher education. She is currently working on several publications in collaboration with other members of the NCCCP program, and she will continue to participate in the program as additional sites are selected. These activities will enrich the research program at Brown’s Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research, and provide research training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students at Brown.
“This award validates the importance of the NCCCP as a combined effort to boost the quality of cancer care delivered by community hospital programs,” Fennell said. “But the award is also a validation of the importance of a scientifically rigorous evaluation plan attached to this huge community-based intervention. For me, this is my most important project, as it has immediate relevance and will have a direct impact on shaping the delivery of cancer care in the 21st century.”