Dawn Hershman, MD, MS, FASCO, Elected Co-Chair of SWOG Cancer Research Network
Dawn Hershman, MD, MS, FASCO, has been elected group co-chair of the SWOG Cancer Research Network, alongside Primo Nery Lara, MD, director of the University of California Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Hershman and Dr. Lara will begin their six-year term as co-chairs beginning in the Spring of 2025.
Dr. Hershman, interim chief of the division of hematology/oncology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and deputy director of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC), currently serves as vice chair of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Community Oncology Research Programs (NCORP) research portfolio at SWOG, which includes prevention and epidemiology, cancer care delivery, symptom control and quality of life, and survivorship trials.
The SWOG Cancer Research Network is a global cancer research community that fosters connections for researchers to conduct publicly available clinical trials across institutions, building interdisciplinary teams that focus on enhancing cancer care and quality of life for cancer survivors. As Part of the NCI's National Clinical Trials Network and the NCI Community Oncology Research Program, SWOG has more than 18,000 members in 47 states and six other countries and is one of the largest NCI-supported cancer clinical trials cooperative groups.
In a joint statement, Dr. Hershman expressed her desire to build upon SWOG’s track record of success, emphasizing the value of the organization’s collaborative approach to clinical trials research.
Along with Dr. Lara, Dr. Hershman said, “we both understand that the success of SWOG has been fundamentally anchored in collaborative interdisciplinary team science. We are convinced that a multi-PI approach at the group chair level truly represents SWOG’s highly successful team-based nature. We believe that the breadth and depth of our experiences and skillsets in clinical and translational cancer research within SWOG and across the NCTN and NCORP are so highly complementary and synergistic that we expect nothing more than even greater impact of SWOG’s activities into the foreseeable future.”
Dr. Hershman has been a member of SWOG for nearly 20 years and received several national awards in recognition of her contributions to cancer research and mentorship, including the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) Research Professor Award and a 2021 Giants of Cancer Care Award. Her research at the HICCC and as a member of the SWOG network focuses on improving cancer care delivery, reducing disparities and designing studies to improve the quality of life and quality of care for breast cancer survivors.
