New Campaign Highlights VICC’s Role As NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center

By Cynthia Floyd Manley

With the launch of a new streamlined call center and the near-completion of a major expansion and renovation of its Henry-Joyce Cancer Clinic, the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center has embarked on its first advertising campaign in nine years.

Vanderbilt-Ingram is one of only 40 NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers and among the top 10 in competitive research funding, an indicator of scientific prowess.

The goal of the campaign is to assure that more residents of Middle Tennessee are aware of the special resource they have in Vanderbilt-Ingram as a Comprehensive Cancer Center designated by the National Cancer Institute – one of only 40 in the United States and the only one in Tennessee that treats patients of all ages, with all cancer types.

“We are proud of our role as an NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center,” said David Johnson, M.D., deputy director of the Center. “This distinction puts us alongside the nation’s finest cancer centers. We are honored to stand with our peers — M.D. Anderson, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Johns Hopkins, Dana Farber, to name a few – in providing the highest quality cancer care and carrying out innovative, high-impact research.

“For us, cancer is the competition. We know the best cancer care is provided close to home, near family and friends, if at all possible. We never want someone in our community to travel out of state for cancer care – at great expense and great inconvenience – simply because they were unaware of a resource here in their own backyard.”

The campaign, which launched the first week of April, includes print, radio, billboard, television and online components.

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center brings together all of the cancer-related patient care, research, prevention, education and outreach activities at Vanderbilt University. Its doctors, nurses and others work closely together in multidisciplinary teams focused on very specific types of cancer.

The campaign emphasizes the importance of collaboration among the nation's leading cancer centers, in research and in patient care.

Its clinical care is backed by a research program that is among the top 10 in the United States in competitive research funding from the National Cancer Institute, which is an objective measure of scientific excellence. And a hallmark of the center is its commitment to translational research, which takes pioneering discoveries in the lab and brings them to the benefit of patients as quickly as possible.

The campaign emphasizes the importance of beginning a treatment plan with a team that has experts in all types of cancer as well as one that includes experts in other medical disciplines that may be important to comprehensive cancer care.

“Cancer does not occur in a vacuum,” said Beth Price, M.B.A., the Center’s chief executive officer. “Moreover, our commitment to our patients doesn’t end with the completion of their surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy. We are concerned about their survival and ‘survivorship’ and are committed to offering a comprehensive survivorship program and other supportive activities.

Among Vanderbilt-Ingram's strengths is its team approach bringing to the case all specialists who may be involved in a patient's care.

“Our patients often have other medical concerns, and unfortunately, sometimes the very cancer treatments that save someone’s life can create other health problems. So we believe one of our strengths for our patients is that we are part of a leading academic medical center that includes a world-class Heart and Vascular Institute, Diabetes Center, Children’s Hospital, and a full range of other specialized services under one umbrella.”

Among other developments at VICC:

• Its Henry-Joyce Clinic on the Vanderbilt campus has been renovated and expanded to more than double the square footage and number of rooms for delivery of chemotherapy. Its new Infusion Center includes dedicated space for conducting Phase I clinical trials, the first in-patient tests of the most cutting-edge therapies. The finishing touches on the expansion – a new waiting area and Patient and Family Resource Center – will be finished this summer.
• Its Breast Center at One Hundred Oaks will soon integrate medical oncology, including the delivery of chemotherapy, into its multidisciplinary services. By late summer, it will be the only Breast Center in the region to offer the full-range of breast imaging, diagnostics and care with a team of providers working shoulder-to-shoulder in the same clinic.
• Its services are being expanded to the community setting, with new physicians recruited to its Cool Springs medical oncology location and development of a medical oncology facility in Green Hills, set to open in the fall.

In addition, the Center has launched a new one-stop call center for patients and families, as well as referring physicians. The new center streamlines access to the Center and its clinical trials program. The phone numbers include:

• For patients: 615-936-8422 or toll-free (877) 936-8422
• For referring physicians: 615-343-3700 or toll-free (877) 663-8422
• For clinical trials information: 615-936-5847 or toll-free (800) 811-8480

Billboards across Davidson County take a tongue-in-cheek shot at the real competition -- cancer.

The campaign will include activity in social media such as Twitter and Facebook. You can learn more about some of the messages of the campaign by going online to WhyVICC.org. You can also connect with the Center on Facebook or following the Center’s communications director on Twitter.

You can also listen to the campaign’s radio spots:

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