Uncompromising Care from a Comprehensive Cancer Center
Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University is proud to join an elite group of 57 cancer centers nationwide to be designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute. This prestigious designation recognizes our Center’s excellence in cancer prevention, patient care and clinical research.
Dr. Andrew Chapman, Director, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center
A Center Built Around Partnerships
Research shows that patients of comprehensive cancer centers have better outcomes. This fact results from many factors, but I believe three are paramount. First, our commitment to cancer prevention and early diagnosis. Second, our expertise in testing and delivering leading-edge treatments. Third, our dedication to engaging a diverse array of people to guide our research and turn discoveries into effective ways of diagnosing and treating the disease.
At Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, partnerships are at the heart of each of those factors: partnerships with the communities we serve, among disciplinary experts, between researchers and clinicians, and with other universities.
The expanding number of individuals, neighborhoods and organizations who comprise our community-based partners are the engines for the cancer education and research “dialogue” that is essential to our mission. The accompanying article, Forging Partnerships to Fight Cancer, wonderfully captures the benefits of this dialogue for both the people we serve and the Cancer Center’s researchers.
Hien Dang, PhD, recipient of the 2023 Cancer Moonshot award, aimed at finding cures for historically disadvantaged cancer patients.
The dialogue enables us to learn more about a community’s needs and concerns regarding cancer screening and treatment. It helps community members gain a better understanding of how they might prevent cancer and why early diagnosis is so important. It provides researchers with concrete direction to improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment. And it creates trusted pathways for individuals, families and communities to participate in clinical trials of new diagnostic methods and treatments — participation that’s necessary to ensure they are broadly effective.
Our communities fuel our research partnerships as well. For example, the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center Research Consortium is a longstanding collaboration between Thomas Jefferson University and Drexel University focusing on basic research and population health. The researchers involved are constantly searching for new and more effective ways to combat cancer in the lab and through community dialogue. We believe that the Consortium is a national model for comprehensive cancer center institutional collaborations.
Our partnerships are central to all that we hope to achieve. And we’re working hard to build on them.
- Dr. Andrew Chapman, Director, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center
