Leadership, Planning and Evaluation

Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

SUMMARY: LEADERSHIP, PLANNING, AND EVALUATION (LPE) Dartmouth Cancer Center (DCC) leadership, planning and evaluation, led by the Director, Steven Leach, MDSGN, is accomplished by DCC’s Senior Leadership team, with input from Internal and External Advisory forums. DCC’s 12-member Senior Leadership team collectively possesses effective planning and evaluation expertise and uses this strength to execute the Center’s vision. Rated “Excellent” in 2019, the DCC Strategic Plan was deemed to be somewhat lacking in initiatives to foster clinical translation. In response, the Center resourced two Working Groups, its preclinical Bench to Bedside forum and its Early-Phase Clinical Trial forum, with subsequent dramatic increases in accruals to therapeutic and investigator-initiated clinical trials. Reviewers also deemed internal organization to be somewhat complex, which has been clarified, by forming a new Executive Council for Center-wide considerations, and renaming the former Executive Committee as Oncology Service Line Leadership, to better align with its clinical focus. Internal forums now also include twice-monthly joint meetings of COE, and CRTEC leadership. Senior Leadership significantly expanded the DCC External Advisory Committee (EAC), with a focus on strategic priority of immunotherapy, and actively engaged the EAC in performing targeted, ad-hoc review of clinical trial enrollment. DCC’s Office of Community Outreach and Engagement team established ongoing forums for partnership with community representatives—most notably through the DCC Community Advisory Board— in the planning and evaluation of DCC initiatives (including the DCC Strategic Plan). Implementation of a vision for the Center has been evident in themes adopted by the recent Dartmouth Capital Campaign: a cancer innovation accelerator, immunotherapy, and precision cancer prevention. Major Senior Leadership collaborative initiatives were: 1) enhancement of clinical trial enrollment, and 2) the 2020 launch of DCC Center-wide engagement initiatives. Examples of securing institutional priority for cancer at Dartmouth Health included DCC selection as the institution’s pilot focus for its Promise Partnership initiative to establish a learning health system and establishment of a new CAR-T service. Advancement of basic discovery is exemplified by the DCC seed-funded team now engaged in U01-funded studies investigating the mechanisms of FLASH radiotherapy. Oversight of the CCSG award has been evident in securing 17 CCSG Supplement awards in the last four years. In 2023, Senior Leadership led workshops to select four cross-cutting strategic scientific priorities (i.e., innovation and entrepreneurship, next-generation immunotherapies, precision cancer prevention and screening, and foundational cancer research) for the DCC 2023–2027 Strategic Plan, upon which Members can capitalize.