AACR to posthumously honor Worta McCaskill-Stevens, MD
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American Association for Cancer Research will posthumously honor former chief of the NCI Community Oncology and Prevention Trials Research Group, Worta McCaskill-Stevens, MD, with the Distinguished Public Service Award.
The award — to be presented on April 7 during the opening ceremony at the AACR Annual Meeting in San Diego — recognizes and celebrates McCaskill-Stevens’s significant contributions to cancer research, particularly her efforts in cancer disparities and health equity research, in addition to her “relentless support of cancer clinical trials conducted in community hospitals and practices across the country,” according to a press release.
McCaskill-Stevens also formerly served as the director of the NCI Community Oncology Research Program, was chair of the AACR Women in Cancer Research Council between 2012 and 2013, an AACR member since 2007 and a member of the AACR Minorities in Cancer Research Council. She received the AACR-MICR Jane Cooke Wright Lectureship in 2016 and was nominated for the 2024 AACR Distinguished Public Service Award prior to her passing, according to the release.
Before joining NCI in 1998, McCaskill-Stevens worked as a breast cancer oncologist and served as program director for the Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene (STAR) trial that included nearly 20,000 postmenopausal women at increased risk for breast cancer. Moreover, she helped facilitate the ongoing, international Tomosynthesis Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial (TMIST) that included nearly 130,000 women aged 45 to 74 years, in which she also participated, according to the release.
McCaskill-Stevens received numerous awards throughout her career, including the NIH Director’s Award and the NIH On-the-Spot Award — both in 2009, the NIH Merit Award for Breast Cancer Prevention in 2011, and the David King Community Clinical Scientist Award from the Association of Community Cancer Centers in 2020. She additionally received an honorary doctorate in science from Georgetown University in 2017.
Ebony Magazine named McCaskill-Stevens one of the magazine’s Power 100 — Most Influential African Americans in Science and Health in 2013.
In August 2023, Monica Bertagnolli, MD, the then NCI director and current NIH director, announced the creation of a training award named in McCaskill-Stevens’s honor: the NCI Worta McCaskill-Stevens Career Development Award for Community Oncology and Prevention Research, according to the release.
“Dr. McCaskill-Stevens was an inspiration to the entire cancer research community,” Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), CEO of AACR, said in the release. “Her dedication to combatting the cancer disparities experienced by underserved patient populations has helped countless individuals access high-quality cancer care and health information. She is deeply missed. It is an honor to recognize her many contributions with this posthumous award.”
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