Prestigious American Society Professorship Pays Tribute to Dawn Hershman’s Critical Advances in Breast Cancer Research, Health Outcomes

Dawn Hershman, MD, MS, joined the faculty at Columbia University Irving Medical  Center in 2001, but her Columbia career dates back to 1994 when she started her residency at the College of Physicians & Surgeons (now VP&S). Many of her peers at the time had their eyes set on specializing in cardiology – as did she – but after completing her first oncology rotation, that aspiration quickly changed. Oncology, with a focus on women’s health and breast cancer, offered Dr. Hershman the mix of advocacy-oriented work, science, and medicine that caught her interest early on.

“It was clear then that there was an explosion of more progress that we were going to be able to make in breast cancer research in the next decade-plus, and things were going in that trajectory,” she says. “I found that very exciting.”

This year, the American Cancer Society (ACS) is recognizing Dr. Hershman with an ACS research professorship for her leading work in improving cancer care delivery and cancer health outcomes, particularly in breast cancer. A lifelong designation, the ACS professorships are accompanied by a five-year, $400,000 grant and are the ACS’s most prestigious research grants, honoring outstanding physician-scientists and clinicians for their seminal contributions to cancer.

Beyond the personal honor, Dr. Hershman, co-leader of the Cancer Population Sciences Program at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC), and director of breast oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, also feels that this designation pays tribute to an important and evolving area of cancer research. “Traditionally, cancer control health outcomes research and cancer care delivery research wasn’t always recognized scientifically to the same degree as basic science discovery,” she says. “To see that the ACS is recognizing me for the type of work I and others do is also very meaningful in terms of validating the research and its impact in the cancer care community.”

With the ACS professorship, Dr. Hershman is being recognized for her impactful research that identifies challenges in the clinic, explores them in a deeper way (such as her investigations into understanding barriers to cancer care delivery), and aims to develop interventions to improve the quality of care provided to patients.

The ACS grant will provide funding for Dr. Hershman’s ongoing research program, and also will help support research being led by the many junior investigators with whom she collaborates and mentors. Dr. Hershman has said that the impact of mentorship is exponential, and she has made mentoring junior investigators a priority throughout her career. Some of her early mentees are now active collaborators, including Jason Wright, MD, chief of the gynecology oncology division at Columbia, and Katherine Crew, MD, who directs the Database Shared Resource at the HICCC and Columbia’s Clinical Breast Cancer Prevention Program.

This spring, Dr. Hershman was recognized for her avid support and mentorship to women oncologists, trainees, educators, and researchers with the 2020 Hologic, Inc. Endowed Women Who Conquer Cancer Mentorship Award. The award was presented to her during the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) virtual annual meeting in May.

Dr. Hershman holds several national leadership roles in oncology, including at SWOG, an organization she joined while still an oncology fellow. As vice chair of the NCI's Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) at SWOG, she oversees the NCORP research portfolio, which includes prevention and epidemiology, cancer care delivery, symptom control and quality of life, and survivorship trials. Dr. Hershman also co-chairs SWOG’s cancer care and delivery committee.

“The greatest thing about the NCI cooperative groups is that it brings together people that are totally committed to doing research and trials to change the course of care for people with cancer,” she says. “You can have big impact by doing big trials and there is an openness at SWOG that the trials that we’re going to be doing aren’t just treatment trials. SWOG was interested early on in doing more novel and innovative kinds of trials that could have impact but were maybe less traditional.”

For the past two decades, Dr. Hershman’s work has had a demonstrable and lasting impact on improving quality of life for people with cancer and reducing  barriers for patients to receive cancer care. Some of her most recent research has been focused on optimizing cancer patient outcomes through pain management and medication adherence interventions.

“I’m inspired by my patients,” she says. “Listening to patients and observing what happens with patients is a driver behind every research question I’ve ever had.”

Dr. Hershman joins a short list of members at the HICCC with an ACS professorship designation, including Cory Abate-Shen, PhD; Carol Prives, PhD; and Anil K. Rustgi, MD. This year, Dr. Hershman is just one of two awardees recognized with new research professorships by the ACS.