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Several members of the VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center community played an active role in the 2025 Virginia Cancer Conference, hosted by the Cancer Action Coalition of Virginia (CACV) on September 11-12 in Richmond. Community leaders, researchers, clinicians and Massey leadership served as speakers and panel participants at the biennial conference held to provide education and training to key cancer community stakeholders throughout the Commonwealth.

The theme of this year’s conference, “Uniting Minds, Healthy Lives: A Collaboration Approach to Cancer Care,” shone through as CACV honored both the Massey and the University of Virginia Comprehensive Cancer Center as the 2025 Partners of the Year. The award recognizes both UVA and Massey as the “perfect example” for how collaboration efforts can truly make a difference in reducing the cancer burden across Virginia.

Robert A. Winn, M.D., director and Lipman chair in oncology at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Thomas P. Loughran Jr., M.D., director of the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center, took the stage together to receive the award. This reminded Winn of the longstanding “covenant” between the two cancer centers that predates his time as director.

“This is the example of what a real covenant means,” Winn said. “The Cancer Action Coalition of Virginia has been incredibly wonderful in aligning our efforts, so that we actually have the best health outcomes throughout the Commonwealth.”

Further, Winn acknowledged CACV Executive Director Jessica Deering and the board for their efforts in implementing the Virginia Cancer Plan and the impact the organization has had in partnership with Massey, UVA and others in creating better health outcomes.

“36% fewer Americans are dying from cancer today than they were in 1991,” Winn said. “That is not because they are drinking carrot juice and eating more kale, it’s the efforts that we have brought to the table that have allowed for more prevention, more screening, better therapies, miracle molecules that become miracle medicines and a structure in which our legislators have put into place of allowing us to bring the science to benefit the most communities that we can within the state.”

The spirit of collaboration was evident throughout the two-day conference with many members of the Massey community engaging in different areas. This year was the first time the conference included a separate pediatric track for clinicians, social workers and community volunteers to focus specifically on pediatric cancer care. Freda Wilkins, M.S.W., M.Div., a clinical social worker working with Massey, leads a breathing exercise at the 2025 CACV Virginia Cancer Conference.

Freda Wilkins, M.S.W., M.Div., a clinical social worker working with Massey, typically works with adult breast cancer patients, but was invited by the ASK Childhood Cancer Foundation to share on compassion fatigue. Although not her normal field, Wilkins became fascinated by the parallels between adults and pediatric care as well as the information she could bring back to her work.

“In the adult tracks we tend to talk more technical, medical,” Wilkins said. “In the pediatric track they talked about the things that I actually deal with every day as a social worker.”

Her session on compassion fatigue also struck a chord with the pediatric care audience. Wilkins referenced a “dusting off” for those treating or working with pediatric patients and the toll their work can have, especially if they have children of their own around the same age. She began her talk with a breathing exercise that Wilkins encouraged those in attendance to take into their lives and work.

“Think about Western culture, you can’t cry, you have to be strong,” Wilkins said. “Part of what I’m trying to do is to make people aware of their feelings and give them tools to be able to cope while treating a child with cancer.”

The pediatric track at the conference also included a session on managing the “Transitions of Care in Survivorship.”Alma Morgan, M.Ed., associate director of education, ASK Childhood Cancer Foundation, and Matt Bitsko, Ph.D., licensed clinical psychologist, Summit Emotional Health, who both work with pediatric cancer patients at VCU Children’s hospital, held talks during the session.

Morgan discussed the transitions in education and in the workforce for patients, as well as the physical, cognitive, social and emotional challenges faced. She described cancer patients as needing a “purpose” during these transitions. Bitsko spoke on motivational skills used with cancer patients who are having trouble with their identity post-diagnosis, using the metaphor of bumper stickers telling about your personality and cancer ripping those stickers away.

A key theme for Massey, as a community-focused cancer center, hit center stage as well with a session on engaging underrepresented communities with clinical trials. Massey Cancer Champion and cancer survivor Mary Simmons shared her story during the breakout, alongside Mark Dewey, M.Div., Bilingual Clinical Trials Navigator at UVA Health. Simmons not only shared about her own personal experience, but also the feedback she hears now as a community advocate.

“I explain to people at health fairs, different symposiums about clinical trials where I explain it’s actually groundbreaking,” Simmons said. “I’m trying to bridge between researchers and the community."

The first day of the conference wrapped up with an update on cancer policy at the federal and state levels, involving Matthew Ong, M.P.H., director of the Office of Cancer Health Policy & Education at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. Ong said health professionals have a true “North Star” in answering to their patients and communities.

“I think healthcare and public health practitioners pay close attention to the headlines and understand that we are at a crossroads in the U.S. when it comes to health policy,” Ong said. “My plenary session summarizes some of the major policy developments this year and how they impact the communities we serve. I continue to advocate for intentional coalition-building in a challenging environment—to build capacity at the state level to respond to policy threats and leverage opportunities to improve cancer health.”

Ong also serves on the 2025 CACV Board as a member-at-large. He believes the Virginia Cancer Conference brings together stakeholders, who otherwise may not have the opportunity to network and partner to improve community health across a number of fields.

“I think being a health professional means you have to be a team player,” Ong said. “This is particularly true in oncology at a time when cancer research and care is becoming ever more transdisciplinary, and we can’t move the needle forward if we’re siloed in our specialties. I think effective collaboration at the state-level is as important as it gets if we want to have a measurable impact on the local communities we serve. States are incubators for national ideas—known in public policy scholarship as “laboratories of democracy”—and some of the best-practice programs and policies we have now were first piloted at the state level.”

The second day of the conference also featured VCU speakers like Rashelle Hayes, Ph.D., L.C.P., N.C.T.T.P., a psychologist in the VCU School of Medicine, who spoke on motivational interviewing and shared decision making. The day started with a session on the latest in cancer screening and early detection with four experts in lung, prostate, and breast cancers and multi-cancer detection. Patrick Nana-Sinkam, M.D., Linda Grandis Blatt Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at Massey, discussed lung cancer and the role of artificial intelligence in early detection technologies. Alexander Kenigsberg, M.D., Director of Urologic Oncology at Massey, delved into the advances in prostate cancer screenings and what Massey has available to patients. Patrick Nana-Sinkam, M.D., Linda Grandis Blatt Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at Massey answers a question from a community member at the 2025 CACV Virginia Cancer Conference.

“Prostate cancer is something that we can find early and we can treat,” Dr. Kenigsberg said. “It can be a deadly disease, but it can also not be deadly disease. But we don’t really know unless we find it. There are some great advances in how we find prostate cancer, which we have available to us at Massey in both the standard care and clinical trials settings and there are actually newer ways to treat prostate cancer, which many patients don’t know about, which can really minimize quality of life effects, while preserving cancer control.”

Although each person on the panel came from different fields of research, Dr. Kenigsberg said the experience at the Virginia Cancer Conference brings those specialties together for collaboration. A point on theme with this year’s conference.

“It’s really great to have an event like this that brings people from different specialties together,” Dr. Kenigsberg said. “We often focus on our own disease processes, but it turns out there are really a lot of similarities between the cancers and how we’re approaching screening and early detection. I think this is just a great opportunity to meet people who are doing innovative things across the range of cancer research and treatment.”

Written by: Preston Willett