Bon Secours St. Francis Cancer Center was named as a recipient of a $50,000 one-year infrastructure grant from the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, an organization that raises money for childhood cancer research grants.
The healthcare facility plans to use the grant to fund a full-time clinical research nurse coordinator devoted to patients in its Adolescent & Young Adult Cancer Care program. The staff member, who will be hired in January 2021, may help ensure every patient is screened for clinical trials as the cancer center works to find more effective and less toxic cures.
“By expanding the number of clinical trials St. Francis can offer, we make it easier for patients to stay in the community for treatment rather than traveling out of the area,” said Bon Secours AYA program director Dr. Hal Crosswell. “Work we do now can achieve benefits that we don’t know exist yet. By understanding treatments and the effects of treatments, we may find different interventions to try to get cancer patients back into the workforce sooner, or provide resources so they wouldn’t lose their jobs, or be able to protect their jobs while they need to take medical leave.”
The cancer center was the only South Carolina health organization to make the list of 17 new infrastructure grant recipients, which will receive a combined total of more than $819,000.
Since 2005, St. Baldrick’s has awarded more than $305 million to support childhood cancer research, including more than $19 million in 2020.
