Harmar Brereton of Northeast Regional Cancer Institute and Dana Dornsife of Lazarex Cancer Foundation were named recipients of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship Ellen L. Stovall Award for Innovation in Patient-Centered Cancer Care.
The award reception will take place Nov. 13.
Brereton served on the staff at Georgetown University for two years and then entered private practice where he spent 33 years developing cancer services by founding the Northeast Regional Cancer Institute in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
At the end of his private practice career, he helped develop The Commonwealth Medical College, now the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, where he continues to serve on the faculty as a clinical professor of medicine. In addition to teaching at the Weill Cornell School of Medicine, he is also a leadership team member of the International Cancer Expert Corps.
Dornsife is chair of the board and founder of Lazarex Cancer Foundation, a nationwide public non-profit organization she began in 2006. Lazarex’s mission is to improve the outcome of cancer care—giving hope, dignity and life to advanced stage cancer patients and the medically underserved by providing assistance with costs for FDA clinical trial participation, identification of clinical trial options, community outreach and engagement.
Dornsife expanded Lazarex’s mission to bring transformational change to the bench to bedside process of clinical trial enrollment, retention, minority participation and equitable access with IMPACT (IMproving Patient Access to Cancer Clinical Trials). Dornsife serves as a board member of the USC Brain and Creativity Institute at University of Southern California, the UCSF Cancer Leadership Council and the Massachusetts General Hospital President’s Council.
The Stovall Award is named for longtime CEO of NCCS, Ellen L. Stovall, who died in 2016 due to cardiac complications from her cancer treatments. A cancer survivor of more than four decades, Stovall sought to advance patient-centered care. The Stovall Award is given annually to individuals, organizations, or other entities that have played an important role in improving cancer care.
