Patel Receives California Award


Manali Patel, MD, MPH, MS

Manali Patel, MD, MPH, MS (assistant professor of oncology), and a Stanford-led team are awardees for the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. Each of three projects will receive $3 million over three years to carry out an initiative aimed at reducing cancer disparities through collaborative precision medicine.

There were 23 competing collaborations and 10 finalists.

The project Patel and her team submitted is aimed broadly at reducing cancer disparities through innovative community-academic partnerships to advance access and delivery of precision medicine specifically in Monterey County. They plan to develop and test interventions by community health workers (CHW) to increase access to evidence-based precision medicine approaches to cancer care from prevention through end-of-life care. Guided by a community advisory board, they will use CHWs to intervene with low-income and minority patients and then evaluate the economic impact. The hope is to find that the CHW model is reproducible and scalable for diverse settings.

To achieve their objectives, they have enlisted an array of community partners (Cancer Patients Alliance, Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula, The Latino Cancer Institute, Natividad Medical Center, Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas, and Pacific Cancer Care), as well as scientific and community contributors and supporters, and industry partners.

Patel summarizes the project: “This community-engaged project in Monterey County involves a large, diverse partnership representing the local health care, advocacy, community, and policy sectors. We hope to see short-term impact that can lead to policy changes in our State to ensure equitable precision medicine and care delivery across the cancer continuum.”

Patel’s co-principal investigators are Lisa Goldman-Rosas, PhD, MPH (assistant professor of health research and policy and of medicine); Dale O’Brien, MD, MPH (physician in Pacific Grove, CA); Ysabel Duron (CEO and founder of Latinas Contra Cancer in San Jose, CA); and Zachary Koontz, MD (physician at Pacific Cancer Care, Monterey, CA).