Cancer Health Disparities SmartState Endowed Chair

The University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville (USCSOMG) seeks a Cancer Health Disparities SmartState Endowed Chair. The Endowed Chair position is part of a state-wide SmartState Program designed to integrate research activities across the state of South Carolina and to promote economic development. The SmartState Chair will build collaborations across the University of South Carolina’s two Schools of Medicine (Greenville and Columbia), and Colleges of Pharmacy, Nursing, the Arnold School of Public Health, College of Engineering and Computer Science, and Social Work, in addition to collaborations with Prisma Health. Prisma Health is the largest integrated health system in South Carolina, boasting a unified electronic health record, EPIC, from which a robust amount of research data can be accessed.

The successful candidate will lead the development and staffing of the new USCSOMG Health Research BioHub (HRBioHub) and serve as its Executive Director. A quote from the American Heart Association describes this transformational initiative well: “Hospitals and health systems can apply data to drive their strategy to advance health equity. They can also use insights culled from data to identify health care disparities, find the root causes and craft targeted interventions to reduce them and improve health.” HRBioHub researchers will focus on identifying health disparities and designing interventions to address the gaps to develop a better state of health for South Carolinians and develop solutions that can be shared nationally and internationally.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA SCHOOL OF MEDICINE GREENVILLE: A Different Kind of Medical School

There’s a different kind of medical school in Upstate South Carolina, a place where tomorrow’s doctors train alongside today’s physicians and all members of the interdisciplinary healthcare team from day one. The University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville offers a hands-on, real-world experience that isn’t a mere promise for the future, but a way of life. The school was awarded full accreditation for the entire 8-year term by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) in 2021.

USCSOMG enjoys a deep partnership with Prisma Health, the state’s largest private not-for-profit health system. Leveraging the strengths of innovative medical education and an extensive clinical footprint across two thirds of the state allows for numerous research opportunities. As reported by Prisma Health, grant dollars have been steadily growing across the enterprise--in excess of $50 million this year. A robust seed grant program underwritten by the system provides funding for pilot projects. Prisma’s Office of Human Research Protection oversees over 1,200 active protocols, and greater than 500 clinical trials are open across the system.

USCSOMG faculty and students have access for collaboration with researchers not only at USC, but also at other major universities in the area. Examples of the growing research effort include the recent renewal of the Cancer Institute’s NCI NCCORP grant ($8.2 million) as well as the extramural funding obtained for the Lifestyle Medicine program ($1.2 million), approximately half of which is from the National Institutes of Health.

The Cancer Health Disparities SmartState Endowed chair will have the capacity to leverage strengths across both the largest health system and the University of South Carolina -- South Carolina’s flagship university system. USCSOMG takes full advantage of the University of South Carolina's status as a Tier 1 research university.

History

USCSOMG welcomed its inaugural class of 48 students in July 2012. The inaugural class was greeted by the opening of the newly-constructed 90,000-square-foot Health Sciences Education building that would become the epicenter for a forward-thinking institution with a state-of-the-art integrated curriculum.

USCSOMG was specifically created to address a shortage of physicians in South Carolina, including a shortage of 815 primary care physicians by 2030. The school was formed to meet this ongoing shortage, while providing exceptional training for new physicians in transforming healthcare delivery.

Since its inception in 2012, USCSOMG has strived to educate students who are advocates for transforming health care delivery, embrace lifelong learning and are dedicated to improving patient health and the health of communities. The school was named an Apple Distinguished School in 2020, with technology propelling learning every day at School of Medicine Greenville. Medical students are trained in topics for today’s complex health care world, including preventative health, population health, the business of medicine, and high-value care, which means the right treatment for the right reason for patients. For instance, USCSOMG was the first U.S. school to integrate EMT training and certification into the first-year curriculum and the first to fully incorporate lifestyle medicine across all four years of the MD program, an international model for best practice.

Across the twelve SOM Greenville departments, women comprise more than 58% of 5 departments (Obstetrics/Gynecology, Pathology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and BMS). People of color make up approximately 20% of the faculty in the Family Medicine, Psychiatry, and BMS departments and approximately one-third of the faculty in Medicine.

USCSOMG typically matriculates about 110 students per class. Nearly one quarter of SOMG Greenville students are underrepresented in medicine, and just under 40% join the SOM Greenville from rural areas. Fifty-eight percent of students identify as female, and 18% are first-generation students.

USCSOMG Guiding Principles:

• be responsive to the changing health care needs of the diverse communities it serves with an emphasis on health and wellness;
• understanding that health care delivery is constantly evolving and that physician graduates must facilitate and advocate for transformative care that improves patient health and the health of communities;
• to graduate physicians who understand comparative effectiveness research and are champions for patient safety, high-value, evidence-based care, and continuous quality improvement;
• to produce competent, respectful, compassionate physicians dedicated to providing culturally sensitive, interprofessional patient care;
• to recruit, develop, and support faculty and staff who are committed to their professions as a calling, and who consider their teaching abilities as a gift and a privilege;
• to graduate physicians fully prepared to enter specialty training and who demonstrate a commitment to lifelong learning and civic responsibility; and
• to be integrated with all aspects of the partner health delivery system, utilizing policies and procedures that synergistically combine the academic virtues of USC with the operational efficiencies of Prisma Health.

USCG School of Medicine Diversity Statement

“At the University of South Carolina, we strive to cultivate an inclusive environment that is open, welcoming, and supportive of individuals of all backgrounds. We recognize diversity in our workforce is essential to providing academic excellence and critical to our sustainability. The University is committed to eliminating barriers created by institutional discrimination through accountability and continuous process improvement. We celebrate the diverse voices, perspectives, and experiences of our employees.”

ABOUT THE SOUTH CAROLINA CENTERS OF ECONOMIC EXCELLENCE SMARTSTATE PROGRAM

During the 2002 legislative session, the S.C. General Assembly passed the South Carolina Research Centers of Economic Excellence Act. With an allocation of $30 million in lottery funds, to be matched on a dollar-for-dollar basis with non-state funds, the General Assembly established a program to award to the State’s three research universities, through a competitive application process, funds to endow professorships and facilitate establishment of research centers in research areas that will eventually lead to enhanced economic opportunities for the State’s citizens. The General Assembly viewed this program as an incentive program to be used to raise capital from the private sector to support, in particular, the recruitment and maintenance of leading scientists and engineers whose work will ultimately promote the growth and expansion of knowledge-based industries and the creation of more and better paying employment opportunities for the people of South Carolina.

University of South Carolina SmartState Centers of Economic Excellence

The University of South Carolina is home to 27 SmartState Centers of Economic Excellence, including 18 that are headquartered at USC's Columbia campus, and eight in which USC is a supporting research collaborator working with other South Carolina research institutions.

• Advanced Tissue Biofabrication
• Advancing Chronic Care Outcomes Through Research and Innovation (ACORN)
  • Chair: Cynthia L. Corbett
• Brain Imaging
  • Chair: Christopher Rorden
• Cancer Disparities
• Cancer Drug Discovery
  • Chair: Mitzi Nagarkatti
• Catalysis for Renewable Fuels
  • Chair: John R. Regalbuto
• Center for Childhood Neurotherapeutics
  • Chair: Jeff Twiss
• Data Analysis, Simulation, Imaging and Visualization (DASIV)
• Effectiveness Research in Orthopedics (CERortho)
  • Chair: John Brooks
• Center for Environmental Nanoscience and Risk
  • Chair: Jamie Lead
• Experimental Nanoscale Physics
  • Chair: Rongying Jin
• General Atomics Center for Development of Transformational Nuclear Technology
  • Chair: Theodore Besmann 
• Healthcare Quality
  • Chair: Xiaoming Li
• Innovation + Commercialization
  • Chair: Laura B. Cardinal
• Medication Safety Efficacy
• Multifunctional Materials and Structures
  • Interim Director: Paul Ziehl
• Nuclear Science and Energy
  • Chair: Dan Gabriel Cacuci
• Polymer Nanocomposites
  • Chair: Brian Benicewicz
• Regenerative Medicine
  • Chair: Martin Morad
• SeniorSMART™
  • Chairs: Julius Fridriksson and Sue Levkoff
• Solid Oxide Fuel Cells
  • Chair: Kevin Huang
• Strategic Approaches to the Generation of Electricity
  • Chair: Jochen Lauterbach
• Stroke
  • Chair: Souvik Sen
• Technology Center to Promote Healthy Lifestyles
  • Chair: Delia West
• Tourism and Economic Development
  • Chair: Lori Pennington-Gray
• Translational Cancer Therapeutics
  • Chair: Igor Roninson

Cancer Health Disparities SmartState Endowed Chair – SCHOOL OF MEDICINE GREENVILLE

This project seeks to study and address the growing health care disparities in South Carolina, with the primary focus being on disparities in health care outcomes for all types of cancer.

By leveraging Prisma Health EPIC Data and biorepository, the largest integrated health system in the state, a team of researchers will use the power of Big Data to review all these records in the aggregate, to help identify disparities in patient outcomes, and seek tangible ways to enact change in the delivery of services to undermine these disparities. This research will help unlock the mystery of why some groups have higher mortality rates when faced with cancer, and how to improve those results by changing the methodology concerning their treatment.

This is not the cancer moonshot type of research effort that would take many years to see results. Instead, this research could be put into practice in the short term, yielding more immediate improvements to health outcomes to South Carolina cancer patients. These changes could yield more time for patients to have with their families, and provide additional years with a better quality of life. The additional benefit of this research is that these findings will likely be easily replicated and shared with other states, allowing this impact to be felt nationally.

Benefits and Priorities:

Health care outcomes should not be different for people based on ethnicity or socio-economic status, but they sadly continue to be. The research will seek to eliminate these disparities specifically as they relate to cancer patients in South Carolina. The results of this Big Data research project could be used as a model that could be replicated and shared with other states to achieve far-reaching results.

Proposed Solution:

This project would leverage the use of aggregated patient data and biorepository from the State’s largest integrated health system to address cancer disparities. This newly inspired downtown space, led by the USC School of Medicine Greenville, would be part of a collective of Biomedical tenants working together to inspire and solve for the issues that plague patients with unequal health care outcomes.

Foundation for a Successful Research Program:

The University of South Carolina would lean into the expertise of the SmartState Endowed Chair who, following a national search, would collaborate with existing staff at the School of Medicine in Greenville as well as partner with the Colleges of Pharmacy, Nursing, and the Arnold School of Public Health. This collective is made stronger by being able to leverage partnerships with Prisma Heath clinicians and research team members as well as the unified health records from Prisma Health, South Carolina’s largest health care provider.

Working to address cancer disparities, this research hopes to give families affected by cancer more time with loved ones. This is not an effort to cure cancer--which could take decades to achieve. This program would be able to put its research into practice in the short term, yielding more immediate results for South Carolina residents who are afflicted with cancer. These practices would then be shared with other states so that the results of this research could be amplified nationally.

The primary beneficiaries would be patients who would achieve better healthcare outcomes based on this research. The long-term benefit of building out this model would be the synergy that this partnership would forge between the partner institutions. Furthermore, there would be increased capacity for all schools involved to apply for and receive more federal research dollars and to root out disparities in healthcare outcomes across the spectrum of diagnosis with a high mortality rate.

ABOUT PRISMA HEALTH

Prisma Health is a private nonprofit health company and the largest health care organization in South Carolina. The company has 29,754 team members, 18 acute and specialty hospitals, 2,827 licensed beds, 305 practice sites, and more than 5,200 employed and independent clinicians across its clinically integrated inVio Health Network. Along with this innovative network, Prisma Health serves almost 1.5 million unique patients annually in its 21-county market area that covers 50% of South Carolina.

Division of Research

Transformation of health requires new approaches and solutions not yet developed from the best and brightest minds in academia as well as the front lines of healthcare. Unique in the country, Prisma brings three strong academic institutions (University of South Carolina, Clemson University, and Furman University) together with a leading health system to foster new ideas and bring them to life with efficiency, leverage and speed.As such, research is a core component of the Education and Research Institute at Prisma Health. The Division of Research applies the principles of health system science and supports rapid research and innovation within a learning health system to enhance success in a value-based environment.

Prisma Health Facts A Glance

(Fiscal year 2023, ending Sept. 30, 2023)

Facilities

• 12 campuses/acute care hospitals;
• 18 acute care and specialty hospitals;
• 320 physician practice sites;
• 2,827 licensed beds; and
• 208 NICU/neonatal special care bassinets.

Patients

• 51% of South Carolinians reside within Prisma’s 21-county footprint;
• 1.5 million unique patients treated across the network;
• 119,168 hospital discharges (17,187 pediatric);
• 26,104 inpatient and 77,296 outpatient surgeries;
• 15,474 babies born;
• 540,358 emergency department visits (67,696 pediatric); and
• 8.5 million physician practice and outpatient visits.

Financial

• $6 billion operating revenue and
• $1+ billion in estimated community benefit.

Team

• 29,309 team members, including 1,960 employed physicians;
• 320 physician practices; and
• 5,429 total doctors and APPs within the clinically integrated network.

LIVING IN GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

The City of Greenville was named #4 in US News & World Report’s "Best Places to Live in America." It boasts a population of over 72,000 and the median age of residents is 35.9 years. Persons of color comprise about a third of the population and more than 50% have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher. Residents enjoy an average temperature of 61 degrees and about 220 days of sun every year. Visitors to the city can access it via the Greenville-Spartanburg (GSP) International Airport, located 14 miles from Downtown Greenville.

According to realtor.com, the median listing home price in Greenville, SC was $378.9K, flat year-over-year and the median home sold price was $360K. Greenville is served by Greenville County Schools, the largest public school system in the state and the 45th largest school system in the country. Nine of the district's 11 magnet academies are located in the city of Greenville, as is A.J. Whittenberg Elementary School, one of the first elementary schools in the country to offer a school-wide engineering curriculum. Greenville is also home to seven charter schools and a number of highly accredited private schools ranging from K-3 to high school. The South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, the state's premier school for artistically talented high school students, is located in downtown Greenville.

Greenville features over 1,300 restaurants with delicious cuisine from all over the world. The streets and parks of Greenville are home to 125+ pieces of stunning original art. Surrounded by lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Greenville area is an outdoor paradise. More than 50 waterfalls reside within the Blue Ridge Escarpment  (where the Blue Ridge Mountains drop abruptly 2,000 ft to the Piedmont below), making it the heaviest concentration of waterfalls within the Eastern United States. The diverse watershed ecology supports 40% of the state's rare plant species and is home to many rare animal species, including wood frogs, native brook trough, peregrine falcons, and numerous reptiles. Research indicates that a majority of African Americans in the United States have ancestral connections to South Carolina, and the Green Book of SC provides a tool through which these roots can be appreciated and celebrated by diverse audiences across the nation and the world, offering access and exposure to the rich depth of the state's African-American heritage. Residents and visitors alike can discover 13 African-American cultural sites across the greater Greenville area (Greenville, Simpsonville, and Fountain Inn).

Greenville is home to four professional sports teams and myriad college teams. The city boasts world-class museums and fine/performing arts venues and countless opportunities to enjoy nature and outdoor activities. Additionally, the Greenville Zoo, Discovery Island and Otter Creek Waterparks are not to be missed by Greenville residents—young and young at heart.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS

Applicants must have a M.D. or a Ph.D. degree in cancer biology, data science, epidemiology, public health, health services research, or a closely related field, with the abilities to extract valuable information from big data and strong skills in technology, mathematics, business, and communications The candidate will have an established record of extramural funding and high-impact publications in cancer health disparities research. Full Professors and highly successful tenured at the Associate Professor level candidates are encouraged to apply.

Institutions must ensure that appointments to endowed professorships enacted under the SmartState program must meet the standards listed below of national or international eminence. An individual’s national/international reputation as an eminent scholar within their field must be evidenced by criteria such as:

• An outstanding record of research substantiated by publications, licenses, and/or patents, and a robust h-index;
• Experience in prominent leadership roles on such entities as editorial boards, advisory boards, and professional associations;
• A successful record of earning and renewing grants and awards and/or the potential to provide sustainable funding for the research program; and
• A robust body of external research that has the potential to make substantive contributions to the State’s economic development, provide solutions for community, health, business, or education problems.

Additionally, the Cancer Health Disparities Smart State Endowed Chair will possess many of the following capabilities and personal attributes:

• Expertise in organizational effectiveness; superior organizational and creative problem-solving skills;
• An appetite for enacting change and making an impactful and quantifiable difference in the lives of and health outcomes for South Carolinians;
• Collaborative vision setting and the ability to show others how to take an idea from thought to implementation to action;
• Demonstrated expertise in interdisciplinary research collaboration; ability and desire to work with others, cross-departmentally and cross-institutionally;
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills;
• Experience in teaching and mentoring medical students, resident fellows, doctoral and post-doctoral students;
• A desire to connect with people in a meaningful way; a colleague who brings a sense of humility and openness to the work and the mission;
• Superior leadership and emotional intelligence;
• A significant track record of federal funding that includes multi-IT, interdepartmental, and cross-disciplinary research;
• Knowledge of and success in earning NIH and other highly completive funding (e.g., American Cancer Society); and
• A commitment to promoting health equity and addressing health disparities.

Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience. The anticipated salary range for this role is $200,000 - $300,000 with a generous benefits package.

APPLICATION AND CONTACT INFORMATION

To apply for the position, please click here.

Complete applications must include the following:

• Cover Letter;
• Curriculum Vitae;
• List of References and Contact Information;
• Teaching Statement; and
• Research Statement.

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The University of South Carolina does not discriminate in educational or employment opportunities or decisions for qualified persons on the basis of age, ancestry, citizenship status, color, disability, ethnicity, familial status, gender (including transgender), gender identity or expression, genetic information, HIV/AIDs status, military status, national origin, pregnancy (false pregnancy, termination of pregnancy, childbirth, recovery therefrom or related medical conditions, breastfeeding), race, religion (including religious dress and grooming practices), sex, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other bases under federal, state, local law, or regulations.