NCCCP 

Geisinger selected to join National Cancer Institute's strategic program 

Geisinger Medical Center is among 14 new sites chosen by the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to join a national network of community cancer centers offering expanded research opportunities and state-of-the-art cancer care at hospitals serving largely rural, suburban, small-town, and underserved urban populations.

The NCI Community Cancer Centers Program (NCCCP) is using $40 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to expand its number of community hospital-based sites from 16 to 30. In addition, the program is studying ways for patients to have access to the latest, evidence-based care close to where they live. For a variety of reasons, many cancer patients cannot commute to major academic medical centers for treatment. In fact, 85 percent of patients are diagnosed, and receive at least their first course of treatment, at a community hospital.

NCCCP is designed to create new research opportunities across the cancer continuum from screening and treatment to follow-up care, with an emphasis on minority and underserved populations.

NCCCP centers are addressing ways to reduce healthcare disparities, improve access to clinical trials, improve overall quality of care, promote an infrastructure to collect high-quality biospecimens such as blood and tissue samples for research, and link with national computer networks that support research. The centers also work to improve survivorship, palliative care services, and patient advocacy.

 “The selection of Geisinger Medical Center's cancer program as an NCI Community Cancer Center is an honor and a recognition of Geisinger’s leadership in cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment and research,” said Glenn D. Steele, M.D., Ph.D., president and CEO, Geisinger Health System. “This designation will help Geisinger deliver innovation and discovery and enhance the diffusion of research and technology to positively influence cancer care today and tomorrow.”

"We are honored to be one of the handful of hospital-based programs that the NCI selected to make sophisticated cancer care available to people who need it in the communities where they live,” said T.S. Ravikumar, M.D., FACS, chair, Geisinger cancer services, and principal investigator and physician director of the NCCCP award,  “Our already robust cancer program will have access to a greater array of services and clinical trials, the ability to tap into the brightest minds of the country and the resources needed to advance our personalized oncology initiative and to ultimately deliver the highest quality care to patients facing a cancer diagnosis.”

Geisinger is also the recipient of a $1.7 million NCCCP grant to further enhance the current clinical program and increase clinical trial enrollments to include:

• increasing health screenings, health fairs and speaking event in the communities that Geisinger serves
• providing patients access to the very latest cancer prevention and treatment advances made through NCI-sponsored clinical trials at Geisinger’s community practice sites
• other clinical departments

For more information, visit http://ncccp.cancer.gov.

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