ASCO honoree uses unique vision to improve health equity, train emerging leaders
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When Robert A. Winn, MD, learned he’d receive the Allen Lichter Visionary Leader Award at this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting, he reacted in the form of a question: “What just happened?”
“I was incredibly honored, excited and humbled,” Winn, director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, told Healio. “I am honored that anyone would speak of me in the same context as Dr. Lichter. He was just amazing.”
A unique vision
Despite Winn’s surprise at being selected to receive Lichter’s namesake award, ASCO clearly saw a similarity between the two clinicians.
“Innovation, they say, is when people are looking at the same thing but seeing something different,” Winn said. “Back in the 1970s, people were looking at the field of radiation oncology and saying, ‘Why would you do that? It’s a dead-end career.’”
Nevertheless, Lichter had the foresight to imagine an important future for radiation oncology and became a pioneer of the field. He held multiple leadership roles at University of Michigan, served as director of the radiation therapy section of NCI's Radiation Oncology Branch and spent a decade as ASCO’s CEO.
“It wasn’t popular, but he could see something others couldn’t,” Winn said. “As a result of his courage and vision, the entire field has advanced.”
Winn has brought a similarly innovative approach to ensuring health equity in cancer care.
“In looking at health equity as a science and as a discipline, it’s been helpful to look at this missing ‘-omics’ — that data from the community that could be used to refine our scientific questions and approaches,” he said. “It was a cool thing to be able to see the same thing everybody else was looking at, but to see it just a little bit differently.”
In his current role, Winn oversees an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center that offers advanced oncology care, conducts research into new therapies, offers high-quality education and training, and engages with the community to improve representation and reduce health disparities.
Winn played an instrumental role in the development of a 21st century model of equity for cancer research and care. The model enlists the community in informing and collaborating with VCU Massey on its research, with a goal of better understanding and addressing disparities in cancer care.
Winn has received the NCI Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities CURE Program Lifetime Achievement Award, the AACR-Minorities in Cancer Research Jane Cooke Wright Lectureship, the AACI Cancer Health Equity Award, and the Prevent Cancer Foundation Cancer Prevention and Early Detection Laurel Award for increasing health equity.
Winn established the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Award Program, which addresses cancer clinical trial diversity from a physician training angle.
“In thinking about how to get more people onto clinical trials, we realized we hadn’t trained people to do that,” he said. “We had people who were trained to do outreach and engagement work, and we trained people to design and implement high-impact clinical trials, but we never trained people in what I call the science of outreach and engagement.”
Making a good idea better
Established in 2020, the Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Award (Winn CDA) program aims to train emerging leaders and change the landscape of clinical cancer research.
The awards are available to physicians and medical students at various career stages. The Winn CDA is a 2-year program aimed at supporting early-stage investigator physicians who have shown a commitment to increasing diversity in clinical trials within their communities.
“The big idea was to have the first trainees in the United States who would be able to not only design and implement trials, but also know how to use an asset map and leverage our assets within the community to get more diversity in clinical trials,” he said. “We are on our fourth cohort, and it’s been great to see how the early cohorts are taking a good idea and making it better.”
The Winn Clinical Investigator Leadership Award, — new this year — is a 3-year career and leadership award intended for oncology and cardiovascular graduates of the Winn CDA program, It is sponsored by the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation.
The first cohort of the program received training in January and will be led by ASCO in collaboration with NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network.
It will offer salary support for participants during their award term, as well as mentoring and advanced training in clinical trial knowledge and leadership. Participants are paired with an experienced clinical trialist mentor who guides them through the effective application of the skills they learned in training.
“Now, there will be a subset of leaders from the Winn CDA Award who will go on to learn how to become even better leaders within our cooperative trial,” he said. “That’s another thing I’m incredibly proud of.”
Winn said he is happy to be part of an effort to mentor and nurture the careers of emerging clinical trialists. He added that his career would not be what it is today if not for his mentors, including globally renowned oncologist and researcher Otis Brawley, MD, a Bloomberg distinguished professor of oncology and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University and former chief medical officer of American Cancer Society.
“Dr. Brawley has been both an inspiration and a consistent mentor to me,” Winn said. “He’s been very important to any success I’ve had in my career.”
DNA meets ZNA
Looking ahead, Winn said he intends to focus efforts on ensuring broader access to cutting-edge research studies and cancer treatments to further advance the field and equitable care access.
“I want to make sure the science isn’t just reaching those who can get to it,” he said. “I want us to make the science and the fruit of that science accessible to everyone.”
He also hopes to see progress with precision medicine and genetic testing.
“Precision medicine in its next iteration will be more than just a sequencing of genes,” he said. “Precision medicine is person-based medicine. In addition to including data from the sequencing of their genes, we want to also integrate data about the place and space in which people live, how their ancestry might play a role, and the impacts of multiple levels of stress in a community on their DNA.”
Winn said he hopes the next generation of precision medicine will study how an individual’s DNA interacts with their ZNA, which accounts for their zip code and neighborhood of association.
“The challenge is how to go from precision medicine as a static sequencing event to being part of this science of moving and understanding,” he said. “It will be exciting to see precision medicine moving in this direction.”
Winn said he is eager to continue advancing cancer health equity, adding that he feels tremendous responsibility receiving the Allen Lichter Visionary Leader Award.
“There are so many giants who have been associated with ASCO, and the fact that I’m able to represent Dr. Lichter in any way gives me a great sense of duty and inspiration,” Winn said. “I want to continue to carry the mantle of ASCO and its leadership forward into the future.”
For more information:
Robert A. Winn, MD, can be reached at robert.winn@vcuhealth.org.
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