A new initiative aims to raise awareness among Washington, DC, area patients and physicians that clinical trials may be the first-line option, as opposed to the last resort, for newly-diagnosed cancer patients. The new effort is spearheaded by Advancing Cancer Treatment, a philanthropic initiative that supports patients’ access to the best in modern cancer treatments.
Currently, fewer than 5 percent of cancer patients participate in clinical trials, principally because they lack awareness. Of patients who do not participate in clinical trials, 80 percent report it is because their physician did not tell them the option exists. Ninety-one percent of cancer patients in clinical trials report a very favorable experience.
Advancing Cancer Treatment is recognizing Leadership Award winners in a series of public awareness advertisements running in June in The Washingtonian and Baltimore Magazine.
The ads are intended to reward those progressive physicians who are actively supporting their patients’ access to the most advanced options for improved care, including clinical trials for prostate, bladder and kidney cancer.
Nancy Dawson, urological oncologist at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington and founder of Nancy, founder of Genito-Urinary Multidisciplinary DC Regional Oncology Project,
Adam Metwalli, president of GUMDROP and Chief, Division of Urology, Department of Surgery at Howard University Hospital in Washington, and
Channing Paller, past president of GUMDROP and a Medical Oncologist at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington along with several dozen other physicians, received Leadership Awards from ACT.
