Press Releases
ATLANTA – March 18, 2022- The American Cancer Society honors two health systems with the inaugural Health System/Patient Support Team of the Year Award, a national honor presented in recognition of an incredible partnership and astounding achievements in improving the lives of cancer patients and their families. The 2021 recipients are Atrium Health from Charlotte, NC and Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center from Wilmington, NC.
The Health System/Patient Support Team of the Year Award recognizes a health system partner that provides exemplary health care to their patients in alignment with the American Cancer Society’s mission. These systems have demonstrated innovative and collaborative approaches to enhancing prevention, early detection, medical care, and quality of life for cancer patients and their families.
Atrium Health: Atrium Health’s partnership with the American Cancer Society encompasses every dimension of our organization’s mission and runs the entire cancer continuum. In the cancer prevention space, they partnered with ACS in a quality improvement project across all their pediatric clinics to achieve an increase in HPV vaccination rates in 2021. They also developed a holistic FIT testing that integrates smoking cessation and physical activity to advance their work in colorectal cancer prevention. From an early detection standpoint, ACS has partnered with Atrium Health and nine safety net clinics, through collaboration on a NFL Covid Catch Up grant, which resulted in numerous uninsured patients receiving access to mammography. They have also supported other ACS partners to help bring no-cost lung cancer screening to rural parts of North Carolina and partnered with ACS to reduce barriers to treatment – quickly activating grants to meet transportation and lodging needs of cancer patients in their community. Atrium Health has also continuously supported ACS financially through community fundraising and volunteerism, as well as ACS CAN and its advocacy efforts.
Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center (NHRMC): Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center (NHRMC) in Wilmington, North Carolina has been a longtime supporter and partner of the American Cancer Society. They have supported ACS through fundraising and event opportunities along with partnership and promotion of ACS programs and services. NHRMC has partnered with ACS to create one of the most successful Road to Recovery programs on the East Coast – providing over 8,800 rides across a three-county area in the past three years. Recently, NHRMC was selected to be one of the 21 systems nationwide to participate in the Health Systems Capacity Building Communities of Practice project. They plan to specifically focus their efforts on increasing breast cancer screening rates in African American and Hispanic women, ages 50-74. This is just one example of how NHRMC is committed to closing the gap in health disparities and improving the lives of all cancer patients and their families. This system has exhibited exemplary partnership and commitment to the fight against cancer and the impact is reaching not only local and regional goals, but the national goals of the ACS mission.
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