Helen F. Graham Cancer Center awarded $2.8 Million to expand research

The Helen F. Graham Cancer Center  at Christiana Care is the recipient of $2.8 million from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to expand cancer research.

The funding is part of $80 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) awarded the 16 members of the NCI Community Cancer Centers Program (NCCCP) and supports an additional 14 new network sites.

The Helen F. Graham Cancer Center will use the funding to expand its community outreach programs, improve health care disparities, leverage information technology to benefit patient safety and enhance survivorship and palliative care. The award will also promote smoking cessation among cancer survivors and boost genetic counseling and breast cancer research.

The NCCCP is a network of community-hospital cancer centers 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, designed as a community-based platform, supports basic, clinical and population-based research initiatives.

“The continued funding of the NCCCP demonstrates the success that this network has brought to patients in their community cancer centers,” says Nicholas J. Petrelli, M.D., Bank of America Endowed medical director of the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center at Christiana Care. “We are proud to be part of this elite group of cancer centers across the country as we continue to make progress in all aspects of cancer care.”

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 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, designed to create new research opportunities across the cancer continuum, places 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.