Baptist Cancer Center’s director has plenty on his plate

After 21 years at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, Stephen B. Edge, MD, was ready for a new challenge. He found that and more when he took over as director of the Baptist Cancer Center in August 2013.

Edge is overseeing construction of a new building that will be the centerpiece of Baptist Memorial Health Care’s cancer services. The building is scheduled to open in 2016.

Edge also will be highly involved in clinical research funded by a five-year grant totaling more than $3 million that was awarded last month by the National Cancer Institute. Baptist will be one of 12 cancer centers in the United States to address disparities in cancer outcomes for minorities and other underserved groups, with the focus on Memphis because of its disturbingly high mortality gap.

Edge will be Baptist’s principal investigator in the NCI’s Community Oncology Research Program.

“Our biggest challenges are looking at ways to enhance the value of what we provide to our patients, remembering that we have to always have a special focus on those who have the hardest time accessing us,” he said. “You and I have good health insurance and good contacts, and hopefully we won’t have a need for cancer services. But if we do, we know we can get the best care pretty quickly. But many in our community don’t have that kind of access, and we can’t just say, ‘Oh, we’ll do a better job.’ We need to actually do real research into understanding how we can do a better job.”

Edge grew up in Chicago, the son of a music teacher and a lawyer. He has a brother who is a musician and a sister who is a primary care physician, and Edge is married to a pediatrician. It was while he was an undergraduate at Tufts University that he became interested in medicine.

“They had a six-week program between semesters where you had to do something in community work and I spent time in a hospital,” he said. “I was inspired by the doctors and staff who worked there.”

At medical school at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, he had a chance to work with oncology specialists and decided then to specialize in cancer, in part, he said, because “you’re able to marry together the human aspects of medical care with the very technical aspects of scientific issues in cancer. It’s an intriguing field.”

Edge did his internship and residency at University Hospitals of Cleveland and then completed his fellowship at the National Cancer Institute. At Roswell Park, his roles included chair of the department of health services and chief of the breast division in the department of surgical oncology.

When the opportunity came to join Baptist, Edge liked the idea of joining “a program like this that would extend across a large community.”

“It’s a terrific city with really nice people,” he said of Memphis, “so my wife and I really enjoy living here. Professionally it’s a great medical community with critical needs in terms of cancer care. The disparities in cancer care are striking here in Memphis, even more so than at many other places in the country. There’s an enormous need across our entire network, which extends from Jonesboro in Arkansas to Columbus, Mississippi.”

The disparity in cancer outcomes generally runs across socio-economic lines and is particularly large among African-Americans.

“Overall in the United States,” Edge said, “a black woman who has breast cancer has about a 20 percent higher chance of dying compared to white women. In Memphis, the mortality rate is more than double. That’s the largest disparity in the United States. Baptist is committed to addressing the problem, and has been for some time.

“A lot of these disparities have to do with access to care, and there are many cultural barriers as well. Obviously the National Cancer Institute and we can’t solve all the socio-economic issues affecting American cities. But (we’re) looking to identify ways to revamp the way care is delivered when people have a suspicion of cancer or have cancer, and develop ways to include those people in high-quality care.”

Edge believes Baptist’s new cancer center building will be part of the equation of delivering better care. A major purpose of the center will be to create a smoother-running operation.

“The value is to bring a team of people together who are working on cancer care,” he said. “Cancer care is not delivered by single physicians. Cancer care is provided by physicians, nurses and professionals. In many disciplines, and in most communities, including Memphis, people work in different offices and the care can be quite disjointed.

“There is enormous value for patients to have people working in the same building and even in the same parts of that building who are focused on their type of cancer and their conditions and needs who’ve been communicating with each other on an hourly basis rather than communicating by email or letter. It’s much more efficient and timely for patients. More and more cancer care will be centralized into these kinds of centers.”