Jeannine is the Director of Patient Advocacy for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, a DC-based nonprofit that “seeks to provide the highest-quality resources in education, policy, the pioneering of clinical research, and above all, advancing the care for patients with cancer.” Find out how Jeannine leveraged her anthropology degree into a career advocating for improved cancer patient care!
Transcript
So my name is Jeannine Salamone. I am a director at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which is the world's leading professional society that represents oncology professionals and physicians who treat people with cancer. And I manage our patient advocate programs, so that's in our Communications and Patient Information Department at ASCO. So, it's very important that I meet with and network with advocates and hear them and hear what their issues are, their concerns are and what we can do for them as a society. So a lot of those interactions take place at our educational and scientific meetings that take place throughout the year. And these meetings are opportunities for them to come and learn the latest science and the research in cancer. It's an opportunity for them to build their knowledge, build their education, and also network with other oncology professionals. I'm in the Communications and Patient Information Department at ASCO and I direct our patient advocate programs. So for example, right now we have several meetings coming up in January and February. We have a Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium, a Genitourinary Cancer Symposium, Quality Care in oncology Symposium, Cancer Survivorship Symp, there's lots of meetings that take place throughout the year. And so we try to get as many advocates, patient advocates, to attend as possible. And so we want them to be aware of the fact that they need to register for the meeting, make plans. That's reserving your hotel, making your travel arrangements. And then a lot of times our questions surround scholarships. So this program I started in 2007 is our patient advocate scholarship program. It's very clear that attending these meetings is very expensive. And even if you are employed by a nonprofit association or organization, that's still a lot of money for them to spend to get you there. But a lot of those folks also work on their own. They're working with researchers on cancer research, on clinical trial design. And so they pay their own way. We want them there, but they have to get themselves there. So we started this scholarship program in 2007, and to date have awarded about two million dollars to advocates to get to our meetings.
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