MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — WVU Medicine officials continue their pursuit to be recognized as a national cancer center by the National Cancer Institute.
President and CEO Albert Wright stressed the importance and enlisted support from the business community at the West Virginia Business Summit last week at the Greenbrier.
“All of us know someone that has been affected by cancer; all of us know people will be in the future, and this is our job at the health system to create a national cancer institute designated center that the state of West Virginia deserves,” Wright said at the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce event.
The plans to become the 73rd cancer institute in the country began in 2023 when state lawmakers approved a $50 million supplemental appropriation to support the effort to achieve the designation.
Since then, according to Wright, WVU Medicine has enhanced the existing statewide network stretching from Parkersburg to Martinsburg and Bluefield to the northern panhandle. A major addition planned will be a new cancer hospital on the WVU Medicine campus in Morgantown that would be a bookend with WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital with J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital thanks to a generous donation from the Hazel Ruby McQuain Trust. The plans include new construction in Princeton, renovations to facilities in South Charleston and a new regional cancer care center as part of a major development in Wheeling.
“We have plans to tear down the old Ohio Valley Medical Center and we’re going to build a great regional cancer site that will serve citizens of West Virginia up and down new Route 2 and across I-70 into Pennsylvania and over into Ohio,” Wright said.
WVU Cancer Institute Executive Chair and Director Dr. Hannah Hazard-Jenkins told those at the summit that WVU has steadily addressed the overall health challenges over the last several years including expanding care options into a regional network involving critical care and academic institutions to get care to those who need it. The centers are parts of each community encouraging awareness and preventive care.
“So if you’re somebody with a breast lump and the barriers to care are so substantial, you’re not going to go early,” Hazard-Jenkins said. “But maybe, if you know you go to a place where the people you see at the grocery store and at church are the people that are going to take care of you, you’ll present earlier, and therefore your outcomes are going to be much better.”
Earlier this year, two new WVU School of Medicine departments were created to focus on risk factors, treatment, outreach, community engagement, rural health, cancer health communications, and survivorship—the Department of Hematology and Oncology and the Department of Cancer Prevention and Control.
Hazard-Jenkins said the new departments are just part of the journey to achieve the designation to increase access to care and improve outcomes in the state.
“But it’s really important to understand that what got us here won’t get us there,” Hazard-Jenkins said. “Where we want to be is healthy and prosperous and no longer plagued by the high incidents and high mortality that we see in this state.”
Clinical trials give patients access to innovative treatment options that can improve outcomes today and in the future and are available in no other way. Recently, more than 2,000 women enrolled in a clinical trial that is making a difference, rightly highlighting the importance of expanding clinical trials all over the state.
“Those women were courageous enough to be part of a clinical trial that completely reformed the way we treat early-stage breast cancer,” Hazard-Jenkins said. “When you put patients on clinical trials, the outcomes and disparities that we see completely disappear.”