Acknowledgement

Al B. Benson III, MD, FACP, FASCO, is a professor of medicine in the division of hematology/oncology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. He is also the associate director for cooperative groups at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Benson is a recipient of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Statesman Award (fellow of ASCO) and has served on a number of committees, including as member of the Quality of Cancer Care Task Force, co-chair of ASCO’s Colorectal Cancer Guidelines Subcommittee, the Stage II Colon Cancer Guidelines Panel, and the Guidelines Panel for use of Radiofrequency Ablation for Colorectal Cancer. In addition, he served as ACCC President (2010-2011), and most recently as as chair of the ACCC Clinical Affairs Committee. He is also a  past president of the Illinois Medical Oncology Society. Dr. Benson He is on the editorial board of the ASCO Connection (term completed), Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, American Health and Drug Benefits, Personalized Medicine in Oncology, Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research, and Gastrointestinal Cancer Research, among others. 

Dr. Benson’s research is primarily in the areas of gastrointestinal cancer clinical trials, biologic therapies, phase I cancer clinical trials, health services research, and cancer guideline development. He has authored or coauthored numerous reports, reviews, and book chapters focusing on these topics. His research in biologics, cancer therapy, and cancer prevention has been awarded funding from a variety of sources including the National Institutes of Health. His most recent national awards include the NCCN Rodger J. Winn Award and the ACCC Clinical Research Award.

Elizabeth Hahn is a medical sociologist with expertise in patient-centered outcomes research with a focus on underserved populations and health disparities. This includes patient-reported outcomes in chronic illness, health literacy, and the design and use of novel health information technology. She has expertise in multi-center clinical trial methodology, patient-centered communication strategies, development and validation of self-report measures and surveys, and quantitative and qualitative research methods. She teaches at workshops and symposia worldwide on research design, measurement, and statistical analysis related to self-reported data in culturally diverse populations.

Sheetal Kircher, MD, is assistant professor of medicine at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwester University. Her clinical interests include treating gastrointestinal malignancies, and research interests are on improving the quality of cancer care and better understanding the trends in use and expenditure of services and drugs. Dr. Kircher is also interested in the evaluation of cancer-related health policies.

Julia Trosman, PhD, MBA, is co-founder and co-director of the Center for Business Models in Healthcare, a health services research organization focused on personalized care models and precision medicine in oncology. She holds adjunct faculty appointments at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Pharmacy, and the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.

Dr. Trosman’s work is focused on developing and implementing personalized oncology care delivery models and related reimbursement structures that address challenges of team-based care, timely and coordinated care delivery, and patient engagement. She is one of the authors of the 4R in Oncology Model developed jointly with Northwestern University. Dr. Trosman leads a number of studies and implementation projects of the 4R Model with cancer centers across the U.S.

In collaboration with the UCSF Center for Translational and Policy Research on Personalized Medicine (TRANSPERS), Dr. Trosman studies adoption and reimbursement of precision medicine, with the current emphasis on healthcare system and reimbursement policy implications of genomic sequencing, including comprehensive tumor profiling and hereditary cancer testing. In collaboration with ECOG-ACRIN, Dr. Trosman leads a study of cancer biomarker testing practices (including next generation sequencing) in the community setting across the U.S.

Dr. Trosman holds an MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and a PhD in systems engineering from the Law and Economics Institute in Russia.

Christine Weldon is a health services researcher with focus in quality improvement in oncology care delivery. Her concentration areas: integration of supportive care into cancer care delivery; development and implementation of novel personalized cancer care delivery models; and adoption and reimbursement of precision oncology.