The American Cancer Society is currently funding five colorectal cancer researchers in the Great Lakes Division. These grants total $2.9 million.

Dr. Arden M. Morris, Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Michigan, and Chief of General Surgery at the Ann Arbor VA, is one of the researchers being funded. She is also a cancer survivor.

"There was a distinct moment, when I was lying in the hospital bed recovering from surgery, when it all became clear to me that I was going to have a future, and I was going to go to medical school and become a physician, and care for people who went through things that were similar to what I was going through," explained Dr. Morris. She was in her early 20’s when she was diagnosed.

With the grant, Dr. Morris is hoping to understand and reduce racial disparities in colorectal cancer surgery. "We’ve been the first to be able to show that there are true long-term outcome differences between African American and White patients, consistently in terms of long-term survival after rectal cancer surgery."

This was already established with colon cancer, but Dr. Morris’s research was the first to show the same findings for rectal cancer. Ultimately, her studies will lead to independent funding of interventional research that will implement practical quality improvement for underserved patients with colorectal cancer. With a background in surgery, primarily colon and rectal cancer, Dr. Morris’s research is particularly focused on hospital based treatments such as surgery.

"It seemed sensible to me to look at some of the ways of making cancer care better, by looking at hospitals that patients attend," said Dr. Morris. "We started to separate into what are the patient characteristics, what are the provider (surgeon) characteristics, and what are the hospital characteristics? And where is this difference in survival, what can it be attributed to?"

Another aspect of Dr. Morris’s research is identifying specific processes of care that vary between hospitals that have good outcomes and hospitals that don’t have good outcomes. Dr. Morris firmly believes that physicians and hospitals have a mission to provide good care. "Most everybody that I come into contact with is motivated by the desire to provide good care."

Their first intervention plan is simply to make those hospitals that don’t have good outcomes aware of their circumstances and what they are doing differently compared to the hospitals with better patient outcomes.

"Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths. I would like to see that go away, to become a thing of the past, with excellent screening and excellent treatment programs," said Dr. Morris, who is determined to see a lot of change.

"Unfortunately almost half of Americans are probably under-treated. You know, when you look at all of the data together, some populations are more under-treated than others. I would like for that to become a thing of the past as well."

For more information on the Society’s research program and funding, visit www.cancer.org/research.

Pictured: Dr. Arden M. Morris

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