Baptist Cancer Center Earns Over $5 million in Research Awards
THIS COPY IS NOT FINAL
Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute
In September of 2013, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) awarded the Baptist Cancer Center a national research award of $2.1 million. The three-year award is to study the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary model of care for lung cancer patients. Multidisciplinary care is the coordinated interaction of patients with all key medical specialists involved in the process of diagnosing, staging and treating lung cancer in one place, at the same time, as early as possible in the treatment process.
Multidisciplinary care is widely recommended by lung cancer experts as a model that ensures high-quality, objective, evidence-based care, but it is infrequently delivered in health care institutions. The research award will enable a team of clinicians from the Baptist Cancer Center, and researchers from the School of Public Health at the University of Memphis, to study barriers to delivery of multidisciplinary care as they implement the Baptist Cancer Center's Multidisciplinary Thoracic Oncology Program.
To measure the model's effectiveness, the Baptist Cancer Center has assembled a team of researchers who will get feedback from patients, family members, physicians, nurses, health care administrators and health insurance executives. Researchers will use the feedback to design a multidisciplinary care program that will be evaluated with major benchmarks developed from the feedback of key stakeholders.
National Cancer Institute
In August of 2014, The National Cancer Institute designated the Baptist Cancer Center as one of 12 centers nationwide to spearhead clinical research focused on disparities in cancer care among minorities and historically underserved groups. The work is focused in Memphis, which has one of the highest disparities in cancer mortality in the United States. Baptist Cancer Center locations in Oxford, Miss., Columbus, Miss., and Jonesboro, Ark., will also participate.
The five-year grant, which totals more than $3 million, will distinguish Baptist as a minority/underserved site and will pull together the resources of a number of local organizations under the NCI's Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP). The grant will fund the enhancement of clinical trials, outreach for clinical trial education and enrollment, and support practices serving minority and rural populations. In collaboration with community primary care centers, the program will also address clinical research in screening, prevention and cancer surveillance.
Such awards allow the Baptist Cancer Center to move forward with groundbreaking research to save lives and better serve our communities.
THIS COPY IS NOT FINAL