UAB Department of Surgery's Associate Vice Chair of Global Surgery Equity Lily Gutnik, M.D., MPH, has served as a member of The Lancet Oncology Commission on Global Cancer Surgery to create pragmatic solutions to improve cancer surgery outcomes worldwide.
Together, the commission, comprised of internal medical thought leaders, put forward pragmatic, geographically contextualized solutions for transformative and equitable change to improve global cancer surgery access and delivery in the 2023 Global Cancer Surgery Commission report.
This report marks the first update from the 2015 commission convening and incorporates lived experience from the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The published guide encompasses nine tactical strategies to ensure successful implementation including:
- Emphasizing the role of surgery and surgeons in cancer.
- Creating basic requirements for establishing or expanding cancer surgery services
- Incorporation of technology in cancer surgery.
- Intentionally incorporating other specialties that are integral to providing optimal surgery care.
- Patient safety and quality improvement in cancer surgery.
- Enhancing the role of research in cancer surgery.
- Educating surgical the workforce pertaining to cancer surgery.
- Considering the economic effect of providing safe, timely, high-quality, and value-based cancer surgery.
- Scaling up the cancer surgical workforce.
Gutnik also serves as an assistant scientist for the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB and the Minority Health and Health Equity Research Center (MHERC). She is also the assistant program director for global surgery for the UAB Surgery Residency Program.
About The Lancet
Founded in 1823, The Lancet is one of the oldest weekly peer-reviewed general medical journals and is the world's highest-impact academic journal.