Chair of WVU Radiation Oncology Elected President of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO)

Gerri Jacobson, MD, MBA, MPH, the chair of WVU’s Department of Radiation Oncology, has been elected president of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). She will serve next year as president-elect of the professional medical society, and take office as its president the following year. Dr. Jacobson now serves as the secretary and treasurer of the ASTRO board.

She completed her residency in Salt Lake City and began her radiation oncology career at the University of Utah. Since then, she has worked in both private practice and academic departments. She was recruited to the newly established University of Iowa Department of Radiation Oncology in 2002 to head the breast and gynecology service. This department was transitioning to a new facility, a center for image guided radiation therapy. She had multiple roles in this department. In 2002, she started the new HDR brachytherapy program, integrating the procedures into their multidisciplinary patient care and the radiation therapy and gynecology oncology training programs. From 2002-2005, she was resident program director and reorganized the training program to comply with ACGME competency-based evaluations. In January 2012, she became founding Chair of a new Department of Radiation Oncology at WVU. Her clinical research interests include image-guided radiation for breast and gynecologic cancer, quality of life and reduction of late normal tissue effects, and MRI based planning for HDR brachytherapy. Congratulations Dr. Jacobson!

Nutrition And Cancer With Colleen Doyle, MS, RD 

Colleen Doyle, a Registered Dietitian with over 25 years of experience in cancer control, discusses tips and resources for good nutrition during and after cancer treatment. In this episode, Colleen dispels some common nutrition myths, offers suggestions for how to address changing tastes and food preferences, how to save money while eating healthy, and how nutrition can help you feel great each day. Which foods will decrease your cancer risk? Colleen has these answers and more.

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WVUCI Bridge Program in the Journal of Public Health

Over the last four years, the WVUCI Bridge Program implemented a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary survivorship program for lung cancer patients at the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center, United Hospital Center’s Cecil B. Highland, Jr. & Barbara B. Highland Cancer Center, and Charleston Area Medical Center Cancer Center. Dr. Anne Swisher, co-Principal Investigator on the project with Dr. Stephenie Kennedy-Rea, was recently notified that their paper, “Bridge the Gap: Identifying and Meeting the Needs of Lung Cancer Survivors”, was published in the Journal for Public Health: From Theory to Practice this month.
The WVUCI Bridge Program enrolled 84 patients between 2017 and 2019. Building on the success of the project, the WVUCI is currently expanding the comprehensive cancer survivorship program to other cancer sites over the next year.
Contributors include Abby Starkey, MS, Adrienne Duckworth, NP, Megan Burkart, DPT, Garth Graebe, MOT, Rachel Harper, BSW, Mary Anne Yanosik, RD, and Alana Hudson, PhD