December 12 2022
NRG Oncology, a National Cancer Institute (NCI) National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) group focused on improving outcomes for adults with cancer through international clinical research, recently announced the appointed leadership of the organization’s new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee. Additionally, the group announced a change in the leadership of their Ancillary Projects Committee.
The DEI Committee was established to foster an environment that values and embraces the different ethnicities, races, cultures, ages, abilities, and sexual orientations that comprise NRG Oncology. This committee is charged with ensuring NRG is developing programs and policies with diversity, equity, and inclusion at the forefront.
Katherine Moxley, MD, MS, was appointed the NRG DEI Committee Chair. Dr. Moxley is an associate professor for the Section of Gynecology Oncology in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Oklahoma at Tulsa. She was a member of the Gynecologic Cancer Program at the University of Oklahoma Stephenson Cancer Center and is a full member of the Graduate Faculty in Clinical and Translational Sciences at the University of Oklahoma College of Public Health. Dr. Moxley has previously served as the University of Oklahoma NRG Principal Investigator. She is a member of the NRG Oncology and GOG Foundation Translational Research Committees and serves as an NRG delegate to the National Cancer Institute Cervical Cancer Task Force. She has been a member and Principal Junior Investigator of NRG and GOG Foundation Cervical Cancer Disease Site Committees since 2012.
Kathryn Hitchcock, MD, PhD, was selected as the NRG DEI Committee Vice Chair. Dr. Hitchcock is an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Florida who specializes in head and neck and gastrointestinal malignancies and is the Physician Director or Quality and Patient Safety. She also heads NRG’s rectal cancer working group within the GI Committee and is appointed to the NCI Task Force on Neuroendocine Cancers, the NCI Working Group for GI cancers, and the NTCN Task Force on Diversity in GI Oncology. She is a member of the Veterans’ Group at the Pride Community Center of North Central Florida and a volunteer interpreter (Spanish) for the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice and the Sierra Club’s Inspiring Connections Outdoors program for underserved youth.
Eleanor Walker, MD, was appointed the NRG DEI Committee Vice Chair. Dr. Walker is the Director of Breast Radiation Oncology and NRG Institutional Principal Investigator at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. She is also currently the Medical Director of the Henry Ford Health System Center for Integrative Medicine, the Chair for Diversity Equality and Inclusion Justice Committee, and a Co-Chair of the DEI and Belonging Committee for the Society of Integrative Oncology. Dr. Walker has several affiliations including involvement in committees, advisory boards, and expert panels for the Henry Ford Hospital and Health System, the Department of Defense, RTOG Foundation, ASTRO, Practical Radiation Oncology, the American Radium Society, the Society of Integrative Oncology, the American College of Radiology, the Society for Integrative Oncology, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. For NRG, Dr. Walker is a member of the NRG Breast Cancer Working Group Committee and the NRG Health Disparities Committee.
Additionally, NRG recently selected Bridget Koontz, MD, to be the Vice Chair of the Ancillary Projects Committee. Dr. Koontz is the United States Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Global Chief Medical Officers at GenesisCare USA since 2021. Additionally, she is an Ad hoc member of the NCI Genitourinary Cancer Steering Committee. Dr. Koontz is the Principal Investigator of the currently accruing, phase II NRG-GU011 clinical trial, also known as the “NRG-PROMETHEAN” study, of radiotherapy with or without androgen deprivation therapy in oligometastatic prostate cancer. She is also a member of the NRG Genitourinary Cancer Core Committee.
As Vice Chair, Dr. Koontz will work alongside the AP Committee Chair, Dr. Steven Waggoner, to support the development and peer review process of Ancillary Project concepts which utilize data from published studies to continue to advance the state of cancer care and increase the impact of the patients who volunteered for NRG Oncology trials.
NRG Oncology looks forward to the contributions that come from the new DEI Committee as well as the continued advancements that will be made within the NRG AP Committee.
About NRG Oncology
NRG Oncology conducts practice-changing, multi-institutional clinical and translational research to improve the lives of patients with cancer. Founded in 2012, NRG Oncology is a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit corporation that integrates the research of the legacy National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP), Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG), and Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG) programs. The research network seeks to carry out clinical trials with emphases on gender-specific malignancies, including gynecologic, breast, and prostate cancers, and on localized or locally advanced cancers of all types. NRG Oncology’s extensive research organization comprises multidisciplinary investigators, including medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, surgeons, physicists, pathologists, and statisticians, and encompasses more than 1,300 research sites located world-wide with predominance in the United States and Canada. NRG Oncology is supported primarily through grants from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and is one of five research groups in the NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network.
www.nrgoncology.org