Patients at St.Vincent Indianapolis Hospital will soon benefit from an $80 million infusion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to help expand cancer research across the country. The National Cancer Institute Community Cancer Centers Program (NCCCP) is using the funds to expand its current research at 16 locations, including St.Vincent, and add 14 new sites for a total of 30 in 22 states.
St.Vincent will use the additional funding to continue its efforts to provide resources to underserved areas of Indianapolis through various cancer initiatives, including access to screenings, clinical trials, education, survivorship programs, and care navigation.
The NCCCP is a network of community-hospital cancer centers that is working to provide research-based cancer care spanning the full cancer continuum — from prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment and survivorship through end-of-life care. The program supports basic, clinical and population-based research initiatives.
“As one of the initial NCCCP sites of care, we understand firsthand the significance of this research for cancer patients and their families,” said Richard K. Freeman, MD, medical director of Oncology Services for St.Vincent Indianapolis Hospital. “The additional funding we have received through these research subcontracts will allow us to continue and expand our cancer initiatives and outreach efforts to our community, including those who have traditionally been underserved.”
NCCCP began in 2007 with 16 hospital-based community cancer centers in 14 states. The expansion uses approximately $40 million of ARRA funds to support additional research opportunities within the original network of 16 NCCCP sites and another $40 million of ARRA funds to expand the network to include 14 new community cancer centers in eight new states.
The NCCCP is designed to create new research opportunities across the cancer continuum from screenings and treatment to follow-up care, with an emphasis on minority and underserved populations. Expanding the NCCCP network will provide access to more patients in community cancer centers to support basic, translational, clinical and population-based research toward effective new prevention strategies and treatments for cancer patients.
In addition, the program studies ways for patients to have access to the latest, evidence-based care close to where they live. For a variety of reasons, many cancer patients cannot commute to major academic medical centers for treatment. In fact, 85 percent of patients are diagnosed, and receive at least their first course of treatment, at a community hospital.
NCCCP centers address ways to reduce healthcare disparities, improve access to clinical trials, improve overall quality of care, promote an infrastructure to collect high-quality biospecimens such as blood and tissue samples for research, and to link with national computer networks that support research. The centers also work to improve survivorship, palliative care services, and patient advocacy.
For more information about the program and a map of the NCCCP network, see ncccp.cancer.gov