Barry Kramer, former director of the NCI Division of Cancer Prevention, has received the People’s Republic of China Friendship Award, the highest honor given to non-citizens.
Kramer received the award on Sept. 30 for his work with the National Cancer Center of China, part of the Cancer Institute of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. This year, he was one of 14 Americans to receive the award, and one of two health care professionals out of 100 awardees from 31 countries. The award has been given annually since 1991.
Kramer was nominated by the National Cancer Center for designing cancer screening studies and his leadership in translating NCI’s Physician Data Query into Chinese. The PDQ has been translated into Spanish, Japanese and Arabic.
From NCI, Margaret Beckwith, acting branch chief for the PDQ Cancer Information Branch; Martina Vogel Taylor; Ping Hu; Philip Prorok; Richard Fagerstrom; and Paul Pinsky, all in the Division of Cancer Prevention, were central to the collaboration with the People’s Republic of China. From China, He Jie, director of National Cancer Center of China, and Dai Min, also of NCC, worked with the NCI team.
Kramer retired from NCI in 2019 (The Cancer Letter, Nov. 2, 2018). He is a consultant in the NCI Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences and an honorary professor at the National Cancer Center.
