Penn's Medical School has joined two other area universities in an multi-part fellowship program designed to enhance the training of breast cancer surgeons.
Run by the Breast Health Institute, a Philadelphia-based research foundation, the year-long fellowship is granted to one person annually.
It includes three rotations of roughly equal duration. Surgery, pathology and breast imaging will be done at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, radiation oncology at Drexel University's College of Medicine and medical oncology at Penn's Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute.
According to Michael Scullin, chief executive officer of the BHI, there is no other breast care fellowship in the country that involves multiple hospitals.
The reasoning behind this inter-institutional program is the notion that more hospitals will lead to a better education.
"New doctors need comprehensive knowledge," Scullin said. This fellowship has the "benefit of different approaches."
Each hospital has its own strengths in different areas of breast cancer, and by training at multiple hospitals, the fellows can experience the "best of the best," Scullin said.
"We recognize the wealth and depth of talent at institutions and hospitals in the area," Scullin said. "This is a city of firsts in the medical area. We remain a powerhouse in medicine."
Fellowship Director and physician Gordon Schwartz stressed the importance of cooperation among the three schools involved.
"Cooperation in this manner among these three competing institutions is unprecedented," he said in a press release.
Jennifer Chalfin Simmons is the first recipient of the fellowship. She is a graduate of the Jefferson Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University, and is completing a residency in general surgery at Albany Medical Center in New York.
The inauguration of the fellowship comes just as Penn is working on expanding its own cancer program. Ralph Muller, CEO of the University Health System, said in August that he has plans to continue expanding the hospitals, especially in the heart and cancer programs.
Two new female breast cancer surgeons also started at Penn this month.
BHI representatives also spoke of the need for breast cancer care as vital.
"Certainly [breast cancer is] an epidemic disease," Scullin said. "We have to put all the resources we can behind it."
Penn's Hematology/Oncology Department also runs its own fellowship programs, as does the Abramson Cancer Center.
According to Aaron Nemiroff, business administrator of Penn's Hematology/Oncology Department, six or seven fellows are accepted annually by the department. At any one time, there might be as many as 24 to 32 fellows in the Hematology/Oncology Department. This number is in addition to the fellowships at Abramson Cancer Center.
The Breast Health Institute, which was founded in 1990, prides itself as being "to breast cancer research and treatment what venture capitalists are to business," according to a written statement from the organization.
