2014 Leaders in Health Care Awards: Achievement in Community Outreach (Individuals)

Winner

Beti Thompson, Ph.D.
Center for Community Health Promotion, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

When Dr. Beti Thompson established the Center for Community Health Promotion in the Lower Yakima Valley, little there promoted the prevention of cancers through behavior and screening. These days, the majority Hispanic population relies on the offshoot of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center as a first stop for cancer awareness and treatment.
During nearly two decades, Thompson notes, Weve gotten the reputation for being willing and able to help.

That trust, earned from a commitment to community involvement to learn its needs, has earned the center high rates of participation in screenings for colon and breast cancers. Concerns over high rates of diabetes sparked a broad project to test glucose levels, with follow-up interventions to teach behavior changes to those found to be at risk.

Despite those successes, Thompson admits to lingering challenges. Persistent poverty inhibits many from seeking care, and for those who do, physicians are seldom as bilingual as the centers staff. Conditions breed a fatalism that a cancer diagnosis is always terminal. There are some cultural things we have to work around or with all the time, Thompson says. But she remains hopeful: Our approach has always been to talk with the community, not to the community.

Silver Awards

Julie Gralow, M.D.
Director, Breast Medical Oncology, Seattle Cancer Care
Alliance; Clinical Research Division Member, Fred
Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Dr. Julie Gralow doesnt just advise her breast cancer-surviving patients to stay fit. She climbs mountains, snowshoes, runs and bicycles right along with them. As medical director and team physician for Team Northwest (as well as director of Breast Medical Oncology at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance), Gralow is an influential advocate for improving the quality of life of breast cancer patients through awareness, diet and exercise. She also helped launch the Womens Empowerment Cancer Advocacy Network (WE CAN), to promote awareness of breast cancer and other womens cancers in the developing world.

Phil Dyer
Senior Vice President, Health Management Services, Kibble & Prentice, a USI Company

Washingtonians have now learned what most in the regions health care industry already knew: that Phil Dyer is a sage and generous counselor about medical insurance and liability. As a member of the new Washington State Health Insurance Exchange board, Dyer vigorously helps citizens and employers understand their new options under the Affordable Care Act. Serving at public meetings and informational briefings is familiar to the three-term former state legislator, who is now an executive with wealth and benefits adviser Kibble & Prentice, and his efforts helped ease the rollout of the exchange.