Karen Winkfield, MD, Ph.D. is the executive director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, professor of Radiation Oncology and Ingram Professor of Cancer Research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and professor of Medicine at Meharry Medical College speaks about President Biden appoints Karen Winkfield to National Cancer Advisory Board.
Link to Article:
https://www.newswise.com/articles/president-biden-appoints-karen-winkfield-to-national-cancer-advisory-board
Karen Winkfield, MD, Ph.D., has been named by President Joe Biden to the National Cancer Advisory Board, where she will serve a six-year term and help steer federal cancer activities.
The board advises the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and the Director of the National Cancer Institute on strategies to address cancer causes, diagnoses, prevention, and treatment, as well as cancer patients and their families’ continuing care and rehabilitation services.
Professor of Radiation Oncology and Ingram Professor of Cancer Research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and professor of Medicine at Meharry Medical College, Winkfield is the executive director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance.
On the 18-member board, she joins Scott Hiebert, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry, and Hortense B. Ingram Professor of Cancer Research at Vanderbilt. President Barack Obama appointed Hiebert, the board’s acting chair, to his term in 2016. The six-year terms run concurrently.
An alumna of the board is Jennifer Pietenpol, Ph.D., Executive Vice President for Research at VUMC and Director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. President George W. Bush appointed her to her position in 2008.
Binghamton University gave Winkfield her bachelor’s degree, and Duke University gave her her medical and Ph.D. degrees. Her residency was done at the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program in Boston.
She is the co-founder and director of the Association of Black Radiation Oncologists, and from 2016 to 2017, she chaired the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) Health Disparities Committee. She led a task force in 2016 to improve racial/ethnic diversity in the oncology workforce, which resulted in the formulation of ASCO’s strategy plan for workforce diversity, which was released in 2017 with Winkfield as lead author.
She came to Vanderbilt and Meharry in 2020 from Wake Forest Baptist Health, where she was associate director for Community Outreach and Engagement and director of the Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Office of Cancer Health Equity.