Commentary
Podcast
Oncology Onward: A Conversation With Dr Shereef Elnahal, Under Secretary for Health
Author(s):
Shereef Elnahal, MD, MBA, under secretary for health at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), sat for a conversation with our hosts Emeline Aviki, MD, MBA, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, Tennessee Oncology, that covered the cancer footprint of the VHA.
Approximately 450,000 veterans every year who are on the cancer continuum, from screening to survivorship; 43,000 new cancer diagnoses every year, approximately 25% of which are rare cancers; and experts in almost every type of cancer and disease site—with contributions in both basic science and translational research, as well as lessons for the broader American health care system from among the only nationwide health care system, which has a total enrollment of 9 million.
These are just a few of the statistics Shereef Elnahal, MD, MBA, under secretary for health at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), shared when he sat for a conversation with our hosts Emeline Aviki, MD, MBA, gynecologic oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, chief medical officer at Tennessee Oncology, that covered the cancer footprint of the VHA, from work within the newly reinvigorated Cancer Moonshot program and screening for vulnerable communities to the Million Veterans Program, the largest genomic database of its kind in the country and of Black Americans, including information on more than 150,000 Black veterans.
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