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Kim Rhoads, M.D., M.S., MPH has been named associate director of community outreach and engagement at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. She will also serve as a professor of colorectal surgery in the VCU School of Medicine. Rhoads most recently served as the associate director for community outreach and engagement at the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of California San Francisco.

“I am extremely excited to bring what I have learned from countless community partners, university staff and academic colleagues over the past 15 years about the science of community engagement, to VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center,” Rhoads said. “Although I have lived in California for most of my life, I was born, and my family still lives, in the Hampton Roads area. My Aunt Jeannette’s experience with breast cancer treatment and her subsequent passing in 1993 animates my commitment to eliminating cancer disparities through community-engaged approaches to innovate and improve the quality of cancer care delivery in underserved populations. Massey is uniquely positioned to support these efforts with its powerful leadership in Drs. Winn and Baskin, and the ‘One Team, One Fight’ philosophy, and I am honored to join the team.”

Rhoads brings significant expertise to the challenge of optimizing cancer outcomes for everyone. Her formal training and scholarly work crosses the full cancer continuum from basic science (endothelial cell regulation and angiogenesis), exposures and cancer risk reduction, to clinical care as a colorectal surgeon. She has translated her knowledge of systems through health services research to inform health policy. Before joining the faculty at UCSF, Rhoads founded the community outreach and engagement program for the Stanford Cancer Institute.

“Dr. Rhoads’ work at Stanford, UCSF, and across the country to advance the efforts of community outreach and engagement among cancer centers has established a national benchmark which other offices of COE aspire to reach,” said Robert A. Winn, director and Lipman chair in oncology at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Dr. Rhoads puts the community at the center of everything she does with the goal of promoting health equity and eliminating disparities. I could not be more excited for her to bring her expertise to Massey as our new associate director for community outreach and engagement.”

Rhoads also has formal training in community organizing at the Center for Third World Organizing in Oakland, California, and community-based participatory research as a member of the first cohort of academic-community partnership teams trained by the California Breast Cancer Research Program.

Rhoads holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. She received her MD from University of California, San Francisco, where she also completed her general surgery residency, winning awards for research and compassionate care delivery. Rhoads also holds an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health where she served as a California Endowment Scholar in Health Policy.

Written by: Nicole Hansen