American Cancer Society’s first female CEO discusses goals, lessons learned amid pandemic
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Karen E. Knudsen, PhD, MBA, will become the first woman to serve as CEO of American Cancer Society and its advocacy affiliate, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, starting June 1.
Knudsen currently is the executive vice president of oncology services and enterprise director for Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health. She also is president of the Association of American Cancer Institutes and serves on the board of directors for the American Association for Cancer Research and board of scientific advisors of the NCI.
As part of Women in Oncology’s “Women on the Move” series, Knudsen spoke with Healio about her goals for the new position and her experiences improving patient care and care delivery systems in oncology.
Healio: What have been some highlights of your work up to this point?
Knudsen: I’m so incredibly proud of the team we have here and what we’ve been able to do, both before and after the pandemic. Just in the past 7 years, we’ve established three additional advance care hubs across two states that provide our patients with access to specialists and clinical trials. It’s been a great run.
Healio: What excites you about working with American Cancer Society (ACS)?
Knudsen: ACS is a venerable organization. It’s 107 years old and is based on something I deeply believe in, which is the need to do something better for patients with cancer and their families. That’s the premise on which I run my current cancer program and the premise on which we’ll run ACS.
ACS really stands on three pillars: research, advocacy and patient support. One of my roles in running the cancer program at Jefferson is to advocate for local, state and national laws that help us improve access to and delivery of equitable cancer care. The pillar of ACS that might be closest to my heart is patient support. ACS supports patients through essential educational materials, along with navigation through the cancer journey. The patient support component is what can make all the difference for a patient with cancer and in the life of their family.
Healio: What projects or missions are you looking to fulfill in your role at ACS?
Knudsen: ACS is without question a thought leader. We need to continue to push forward and look to the future. The pandemic has changed things for providers, for patients and for families. One of the things we’re in the process of doing with the senior leadership team, even before I step on board, is to understand what’s changed. What are the most impactful things that we can do, as ACS, under the guise of this research, advocacy and patient support mechanism? For example, the decline in cancer screening is already leading to patients presenting with more advanced disease. ACS can and should play a leading role in the return-to-screening effort. We have research that assesses barriers to screening, so the fundamental understanding is supported by that element of ACS. The advocacy arm is pushing very hard to remove any barriers to screening. Then, through the patient support mechanism, ACS can help to educate the community about the importance of screening and partner with cancer centers.
Healio: Do you have any unique insights into patient care management amid COVID-19?
Knudsen: Here at Jefferson, we were fairly unique in our uptake of telehealth. Our CEO, Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, had said in 2014 that telehealth was the future and set up a telehealth program. He asked every provider to conduct one telehealth visit per month, irrespective of reimbursement, so my oncology team not only had that muscle memory of what to do with telehealth, but also was licensed across multiple states. When COVID hit, and telehealth needed to be scaled significantly in a few months, there were a lot of lessons learned about digital literacy and its impact on equitable cancer care. We have a significant number of patients who have smartphones, but don’t use them as such. It created this real understanding of a major gap that’s a barrier to this new mechanism of care delivery. We worked with our social teams to overcome that. Those lessons learned are what we’re being asked to talk about frequently because of the intensity with which Jefferson stood up telehealth. But it’s also a case in which COVID showed us the resilience of patients with cancer. This is a group of individuals who have already accepted the fact that safety measures were needed because they were already living at risk. A positive lesson learned for us is that we can continue to conduct safe cancer care during a pandemic. I was seeing heroism and success stories every day when I walked through the door.
Healio: Do you have any advice for women starting in oncology, especially those looking to be involved in associations?
Knudsen: This is something I think about a lot, because women are in the pipeline. They’re highly represented both from the MD and PhD perspective in the oncology world, yet not represented highly enough in leadership roles — at the chair, dean or cancer center director levels. This is something we have turned our attention to here at Jefferson. It’s something we’ve tried to understand, as well as what we can do to not only serve as mentors but also as sponsors to women. It’s difficult to aspire to a leadership position when you’ve never seen someone like you in a leadership role. We’re asking cancer centers, through Association of American Cancer Institutes, to see what they can do to encourage more diversity in their leadership teams.
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