UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center Magazine E-Edition 2017 | Page 4

REFLECTIONS FROM THE DIRECTOR –

In his own words

Edward Partridge , M . D ., has been a visionary leader , a valued physician , and a community advocate throughout his longstanding , 48-year career at the University of Alabama at Birmingham . As the director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center for the past 10 years , he has led the center during rapid growth , launching numerous initiatives and programs . As he prepares to retire , he looks back over his time at UAB and shares his valuable insight .
Making an impact
Q : What do you consider your biggest accomplishments at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center ? A : I demonstrated , I believe , convincingly that you can take lay people and train them to have significant impact in cancer care delivery across the entire continuum of care . We started with volunteer community health advisors who promoted breast and cervical cancer screening in the community . We trained a group of these health advisors to serve as navigators to help women who had a positive screening or cancer navigate the system , even though these women were from rural and under-resourced areas . We used navigators to improve accrual to clinical trials here at UAB . Lastly , we trained a group of navigators — all lay — to assist with treatment , survivorship , and end-of-life care for cancer patients with Medicare .
I think this will have a lasting impact because as we move from fee-for-service to value-based care delivery , our ability to extend the health care delivery system — keeping well people well and keeping sick people as well as possible and out of the hospital — is going to depend a great deal on our utilization of nontraditional health care delivery individuals . The potential is huge .
The other thing we did well was we took a relatively nascent cancer control and population science program and in 1992 made a conscious decision to focus our service and research in cancer disparities . As a result , we developed one of the premier cancer disparity research programs in the country .
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