Investing in second chances
State funding bolsters UF Health’s fight against one of Florida's most pressing health threats.
Rebekah Gaudet and her son, Dylan.
Jesse S. Jones
The 2-year-old boy squirms in his mother’s lap, and he fusses a little too much when she tries to answer her doctor’s questions. But Rebekah Gaudet doesn’t mind having her son, Dylan, in tow during her follow-up visits with her orthopaedic surgeon.
After all, it wasn’t long ago that the idea of coming out on the other side of a cancer diagnosis, marrying her sweetheart and starting a family seemed almost too much to ask for.
“I call him my miracle baby,” Gaudet said. “There were times when I didn’t know if I’d be lucky enough to become a mother.”
In another part of the state, Piero Solimano had been seen by more physicians than he cared to count. After battling cancer for nearly two decades, he was looking for news that was different from what most physicians had been telling him during this fourth bout with the disease. Solimano received a prognosis that year from a physician at UF Health that gave him what he needed — hope.
For Gaudet and Solimano and the millions of Americans like them who battle the country’s second biggest killer, the wish to overcome cancer and have a second chance at making new memories should not be too much to ask for.
With a flourish of his pen in June of last year, Gov. Rick Scott signed into law the Florida Consortium of National Cancer Institute Centers Program.
The program aims to catapult three state-supported academic cancer centers — the UF Health Cancer Center in Gainesville, the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center in Miami and the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa — on to the international stage of cancer research and care. To achieve this, the state will invest $60 million annually for five years into its academic cancer centers to rapidly accelerate the advancement of new cancer drugs and therapies for Florida’s residents. For UF Health Cancer Center, this means an infusion of $10 to $12 million in new state support each of the next five years, with potential for continued funding after achieving National Cancer Institute cancer center designation.
Gov. Rick Scott, far right, visited the UF Health Shands Cancer Hospital in 2014 shortly before approving the establishment of the Florida Consortium of National Cancer Institute Centers. He met Sue Baker, a patient in the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, and John Wingard, MD, deputy director for research at the UF Health Cancer Center, director of the Bone Marrow Transplant Program and a UF College of Medicine professor.
Jesse S. Jones
This support from Scott and the Florida Legislature couldn’t have come at a better time. Cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death in Florida, which this year is expected to experience the third-highest number of new cancer cases in the nation and the second-highest number of cancer deaths.
“Nearly 20 percent of Florida’s population is aged 65 years or older, and unfortunately older citizens are on average more likely to be diagnosed with cancer,” said David S. Guzick, MD, PhD, senior vice president for health affairs at UF and president of UF Health. “Yet, when you compare Florida to the three states that have traditionally been ahead of us in population size — California, Texas and New York, though we have just surpassed New York — it becomes apparent that Florida is underserved in terms of the number of cancer centers it has to provide state-of-the-art cancer care to Florida’s residents.”
Guzick views the state support as a catalyst for UF Health to achieve cancer preeminence, helping to address Florida’s cancer burden through accelerated recruitment of top-notch, interdisciplinary cancer researchers and clinician-scientists. He said the state support also would broaden research funding opportunities for existing faculty members to leverage their productivity in conducting leading-edge cancer research and in opening more investigator-initiated, interventional clinical trials to test new cancer treatments and therapies.
“This funding from the governor and state Legislature gives Florida the chance to earn its rightful place as a provider of innovative cancer care and scientific discovery,” Guzick said. “And this will naturally lead to more effective cancer treatments that help not only Floridians but everybody who has cancer in the country and the world.”
Combining forces to increase options for Florida’s cancer patients
UF Health and Orlando Health launched a joint oncology program early last year, which has resulted in one of the state’s largest, most comprehensive cancer programs, staffed by some of the nation’s top oncology experts.
“This new relationship creates Florida’s leading program to respond to the state’s increasing demands for oncology clinical care and research,” said David S. Guzick, MD, PhD, senior vice president for health affairs at UF and president of UF Health.
By combining the knowledge, experience and expertise at both organizations, the UF Health Cancer Center at Orlando Health offers patients expanded clinical care and treatment options provided by highly subspecialized physicians, oncologists, surgeons and staff.
“Over the last several years, UF Health and Orlando Health have shared a common vision, and that is to change the way cancer patients are treated in Florida,” said Mark Roh, MD, UF Health Cancer Center at Orlando Health president. “We recognized that by ourselves we can only achieve so much, but when we combine the expertise of research with clinical care, the opportunities are magnified significantly.”
Bringing the war on cancer to the Sunshine State
The state’s support of its academic cancer centers is a smaller-scale model of the 1971 National Cancer Act, which declared war on cancer and established the National Cancer Program. Over the years, Congress has allocated billions of dollars to the program to establish a network of NCI-designated cancer centers across the country and to fund the advanced cancer research discoveries made in those centers’ laboratories. The investment has paid off, resulting in unprecedented innovations in the development of new cancer therapies and technologies that have saved lives and helped position the U.S. as the global leader in biomedical research and new drug development.
“UF has a robust cancer research program that is focused on translational research aimed at advancing scientific discoveries into clinical trials and ultimately to improved patient care,” said Paul Okunieff, MD, director of the UF Health Cancer Center, a professor and chair of the UF College of Medicine department of radiation oncology and the Marshall E. Rinker Sr. Foundation and David B. and Leighan R. Rinker Chair. “However, we don’t have the legacy of being an NCI-designated institution, so we have experienced some disadvantages in growing our research excellence.
“This state funding helps us answer questions like ‘what is the future of personalized cancer care and molecular medicine, what do the most effective therapies look like and who are the best minds on the planet that we can recruit to UF to focus the force of their intellects and creativity on these questions?” Okunieff said.
Okunieff notes that faculty recruitment supported by the state’s investment is focused on hiring mid- to senior-level scientists, research superstars who will bring mature cancer research portfolios to newly created faculty positions at UF Health in the areas of cancer therapeutics, basic cancer biology and cancer epidemiology and population science.
Once in place, these senior-level recruits will hire junior researchers and research fellows, postdoctoral and doctoral students to staff their labs, further enriching the scientific milieu of cancer research at UF Health. Their work will be supported with investments in research space and core facilities, enhancing investigators’ access to the world’s most advanced research technologies, and in providing seed grants to jump-start the research of junior investigators and spur investigator-initiated clinical research studies at UF Health in Gainesville and at UF Health Cancer Center at Orlando Health.
“In my mind, there are really two national benchmarks of a great cancer center,” said Robert A. Hromas, MD, FACP, a professor and chair of the College of Medicine department of medicine. “One is original basic science discoveries in the laboratory that push the cancer envelope and lead to the development of the newest, most advanced drugs and devices, and the other is investigator-initiated clinical trials, which introduce those new discoveries into patient cancer care to make patients’ lives better and contribute to the economic development of the state.
“The ultimate question we should ask ourselves at the end of the day should be, ‘did our research make a difference in someone’s life? Are there patients who are alive today who would not have been alive before we did research in this area?’’ Hromas said. “Cancer preeminence will help us in always rising to the question.”
Committed to enhancing the patient experience
Orthopaedic surgeon spearheads UF Health cancer care initiatives
By Styliana Resvanis
In his new role as deputy director of medical affairs for the UF Health Cancer Center, Parker Gibbs, MD ’89, will work with faculty and UF Health Shands administrators to ensure superb quality, care and satisfaction for cancer patients throughout UF Health.
Jesse S. Jones
When Rebekah Gaudet felt pain in her left arm and visited a walk-in clinic in Tallahassee in 2006, she walked out with the diagnosis of a malignant tumor in her humerus bone and a referral to UF Health Shands Hospital.
C. Parker Gibbs Jr., MD ’89, an orthopaedic oncologist at UF Health, removed the tumor — along with Gaudet’s shoulder, rotator cuff and humerus bone — and then returned mobility to her arm by reconstructing her shoulder and replacing her humerus with one from a cadaver.
“There’s nothing that’s restricting me,” said Gaudet, 30, who is now married with a toddler and travels to Gainesville for annual check-ups. “I can’t do the ‘YMCA’ because I obviously can’t lift my arm up that high, but other than that I just live a normal life. I would just thank (Dr. Gibbs) for helping give me a second chance at life, because without his knowledge I may not be here today.”
Gibbs focuses on limb salvage surgery in children and adults with bone and soft tissue sarcomas of the pelvis and extremities and is one of fewer than 200 surgeons nationwide considered an expert in this field.
Meet Rebekah, her surgeon and her “miracle baby”
In October, he added another title to his list: deputy director of medical affairs for the UF Health Cancer Center. This new position aims to improve the quality of clinical cancer care and enhance the patient experience at UF Health. To do this, he and the cancer center will strive to promote a cohesive, multidisciplinary plan for cancer care across the enterprise and provide a warm and caring environment for patients and families.
“We want the patient to feel that not only are they getting state-of-the-art care but that we care about them as a person,” Gibbs said.
While UF Health physicians embrace a multidisciplinary team-focused approach to patient care, Gibbs said, his goal as deputy director of medical affairs is to encourage communication among everyone involved in cancer care, adopt a standardization of treatment for common forms of cancer and clearly identify the measurement of clinical quality.
“We want to leverage all the positivity of an academic environment — clinical trials and the enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity of our faculty, residents and students — to provide the best care possible for our patients,” Gibbs said.
He first zeroed in on the importance of quality cancer care four years ago when he formed the UF Health Shands Hospital Perioperative Patient and Family Experience Committee to address concerns surgery patients and their families may have.
“I got a feel for what our patients expect from us, and most of it centers around good communications,” he said. “So I think a big part of this job (as deputy medical director) will be helping our patients understand their disease, its management, and that they are a big part of the treatment team.”
In his 17 years in academic medicine, Gibbs has become a prominent leader in patient care, research and education within the state and nation. He enjoys the hands-on and creative aspect of orthopedic oncology, but he also values the opportunity to interact with people from all walks of life and build meaningful relationships.
“Beyond the technical and cognitive challenge,” he said, “you get this wonderful connection to your patients, and you get to develop it long term.”
