The University of Illinois Cancer Center proudly announces a $1.5 million grant from Eli Lilly and Company to support the University of Illinois College of Medicine Hematology and Medical Oncology Fellowship Diversity Initiative.
The Cancer Center will use the funding to train fellows at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) in best practices for conducting care and research to solve health inequities in cancer. During the fellowship, fellows currently complete inpatient and outpatient rotations at UI Health in its hospital and clinics, where they are exposed to a wide assortment of oncologic and hematologic disorders. The Cancer Center is part of UI Health at UIC.
Lilly funding will allow the Cancer Center to fill an identified gap in providing trainees exposure to safety net healthcare delivery models in an underserved community-based environment.
The generous support from Lilly will help to create and deliver:
- Training for all fellows on delivering equitable precision oncology to patients receiving care in safety net settings.
- Workshops to increase awareness and knowledge of how to implement community-informed and community-driven clinical and translational research in underserved populations.
- Guidance on culturally appropriate responsiveness to community needs.
- Skills building to formulate policy measures that improve access to and excellence in treatment and participation in clinical trials for underserved populations.
Cancer health equity is central to the research, practice, and outreach that the Cancer Center does as a research-intensive, minority-serving institution. This unapologetic focus on cancer health equity is rooted in who we serve in our catchment area – as the Cancer Center that is accessible to uninsured and underinsured patients throughout Cook County, and that is embedded in impoverished communities with a high cancer burden through UI Health Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) sites and 20-plus partner FQHC and safety net hospitals.
“We are grateful to Lilly for this generous support that will further our shared goals to provide equitable precision medicine,” said VK Gadi, MD, PhD, Cancer Center Deputy Director, College of Medicine Professor and Medical Oncology Director, and UI Health oncologist.