The Northwell Health Cancer Institute has recruited four experts to its cancer program:
Catherine Alfano will serve at the Cancer Institute’s new vice president of cancer care management and research. Alfano was previously vice president of survivorship at the American Cancer Society and, prior to that, deputy director of the NCI Office of Cancer Survivorship.
Stacy Sanchez will assume the role of chief nursing officer. She is the former director of pediatric and critical care services, and interim director of acute care services at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Joseph Herman will become vice chair of clinical informatics for radiation medicine and director of clinical research integration for the cancer institute. He joins Northwell after serving as professor and division head of the Department of Radiation Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center, a role he has held since 2016. He specializes in the treatment of pancreatic and hepatobiliary malignancies, and previously initiated and co-directed the Pancreatic Multidisciplinary Clinic at Johns Hopkins University. He currently serves as principal investigator for several institutional gastrointestinal protocols and is a co-investigator (radiation oncology lead) for the Alliance borderline resectable cancer trial, which is evaluating the role of stereotactic body radiation therapy.
Martin Karpeh, Jr., was named director of surgical oncology for Northwell’s eastern region and chair of the department of surgery at Huntington Hospital. Overseeing surgical oncology for Northwell’s Eastern Region on Long Island, he will direct programs at Huntington Hospital, Southside Hospital in Bay Shore and Peconic Bay Medical Center. Karpeh joined Northwell at the end of April to help colleagues during the COVID-19 pandemic. Karpeh comes to Northwell from Hackensack University Medical Center, where he was surgeon-in-chief from 2014-2019. He also was founding chair of surgery at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall. Karpeh has held surgical oncology leadership positions at Beth Israel Medical Center/Continuum Health Partners of New York; chief of surgical oncology at Stony Brook University and cancer center director at Stony Brook University Medical Center. In addition, he was an attending surgeon at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for 11 years.
“We are laying the groundwork to create a survivorship program, bolster oncology nursing practice and initiatives, enhance the integration of clinical cancer research and advance surgical oncology,” Richard Barakat, physician-in-chief and director of the Northwell Health Cancer Institute and senior vice president of cancer services at Northwell Health, said in a statement.
