Oncology, Etc. – Dr. Lori Pierce’s Path From Engineering To Oncology

There are many treatments available for cancer  but how do you make csre delivery equitable? Given the various types of cancers how can you allocate the right resources to create equal outcomes? Dr. Lori Pierce has made equity a primary focus of her career. She describes how physics and radiology inspired her to be an engineer (6:06), and the moment she decided to transition from engineer to oncologist (12;54) and achieving the position of Vice-provost at the University of Michigan (23:01).

Speaker Disclosures
Dr. David Johnson: Consulting or Advisory Role – Merck, Pfizer, Aileron Therapeutics, Boston University

Dr. Patrick Loehrer: Research Funding – Novartis, Lilly Foundation, Taiho Pharmaceutical

Dr. Lori Pierce:    Stock and Other Ownership Interests Company - PFS Genomics;  Patents, Royalties, Other Intellectual Property Company - UpToDate, PFS Genomics; Uncompensated Relationships - Bristol-Myers Squibb, Exact Sciences

Resources 
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Disclosures for this podcast are listed in the podcast page. 

 Pat Loehrer: Welcome to Oncology, Etc. This is an ASCO Education Podcast. I'm Pat Loehrer, Director of Global Oncology and Health Equity at Indiana University.

 Dave Johnson: Hi, I'm Dave Johnson at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Texas. I'm a Medical Oncologist. If you're a regular listener to our podcast, welcome back. If you're new to Oncology, Etc., the purpose of the program is to introduce listeners to interesting people and topics in and outside the world of oncology; hence the ‘et cetera’ in our name. Pat, we've got a great guest today. And we’ve got a great guest today.

Pat Loehrer: Our next guest was able to do this despite living at a time when in the United States, certain groups of people faced tremendous barriers to achieve even the basic hint of equality. Our next guest is Lori Pierce. Dr. Pierce attended Duke University School of Medicine and completed a radiation oncology residency and chief residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She was then appointed as a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1990 to 1992. And in 1992, she joined the faculty at the University of Michigan, where she currently is a professor with tenure in Radiation Oncology.

 Since coming to Michigan, she has served as Residency Director and Clinical Director in the Department of Radiation Oncology. In August of 2005, she was appointed by the University Board of Regents to be the Vice-Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs, a position she still holds. In 2020, she was ASCO President, and while she ascended to the ASCO Presidency, that year COVID descended upon the Earth, and we may hear some stories about that. She's dedicated her career to the treatment of breast cancer patients. She's published over 200 manuscripts and book chapters and has received numerous teaching awards from the University of Michigan, multiple national organizations, and many national awards.

 Dr. Pierce, thank you so much for joining us today.

 Dr. Lori Pierce: I am so happy to join you both today. What an incredibly nice introduction. Thank you so much.

 Pat Loehrer: You were born and raised in Washington, DC. And the family eventually moved to Philadelphia when I think you were in junior high school. Can you paint a picture of what schooling was like for you growing up?

Dr. Lori Pierce: Well, schooling, education was just so important to my family and myself. And so, as you said, I was born and raised in DC. Moved to Philadelphia when I was just entering high school. And my parents, who are just the best people on the planet, didn't have an opportunity to go to college. At that point, a lot of people of color didn't really have that opportunity. So education was so important in my family. So if you think about the important issues in my life, there was our faith, our family, and education. And so my sister, who is four years older, she went to college first. After about two years, I transferred and actually graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and I did that. It was my idea.

 My parents at that point were living in Philadelphia. My mother was working at Penn, and so I would have free tuition if I went to Penn. And Penn is a great place as is Brown. My parents didn't ask me to transfer, but I did. And I received, obviously, an excellent education at both institutions. I majored in biomedical engineering and I minored in chemical engineering and was pre-med. I had to be strategic in how I was going to pay for my education because my parents and they took out loans, they covered everything, almost everything. My sister and I had some loans, but they took out most of the loans.

 But they always had an agreement. And the agreement was that both my sister and I would have our college education covered by them. But anything in the graduate arena, we had to cover. So I had to be kind of strategic about that. So I actually applied to medical school and, as you know, got in, and deferred my admission so I could work and earn some money so I could pay for medical school. And I tell you, I did that specifically for the reason, for financial issues. But now this kind of thing is called a gap year. And in retrospect, it was the smartest thing I could have ever done because I took some time away, and during that time away, it made me even more motivated to apply my full attention to medicine.

 And so education was very important. But I think sometimes you have to kind of step away to then regain the commitment that you need to move forward. And so by the time I started Duke, I was more than ready to be in medical school.

Pat Loehrer: I know we talk about underrepresented minorities. I was a mechanical engineer at Purdue. And I can tell you, I don't think there was a single woman in engineering in most of my classes. There were just a few. So to be a woman in engineering is extraordinarily unique. So tell me a little bit about that decision-making and how you got into that. It may have been different in 10 or 15 years later, but were there a lot of women in engineering?

Dr. Lori Pierce: No, not at all. And while there may have been two or three in biomedical engineering, there were hardly any in chemical engineering, and as you said, very few in mechanical engineering. So no. But I always was interested in physics. I liked those kinds of things, and hence I went into radiation oncology. It was a perfect blend of my studies and my interest. But no, I often was the only woman, or maybe one of two or three women in my classes, and I was certainly the only person of color in my classes.

It taught you things though. It taught you to be comfortable being in that position and to know that you could do it just like anyone else could, and to know that probably a lot of eyes were on you to succeed. Some of that was self-imposed, but some of that was real. But I think learning those lessons then certainly came in handy when I went into medicine because while there are more women in medicine, especially now, compared to what it was when I came through, still, at that point, we were in the minority. And there were very few people of color in medical school where I went to. I was at Duke, and very few people there. You learned lessons early on, right?

 Dave Johnson: Where did this interest in engineering originate?

Dr. Lori Pierce: So it was really more of physics and radiology. So I, as a kid was a really thin kid, and I broke a couple of bones, and I ended up going to get X-rays. And I was fascinated by the X-rays. I was fascinated by this physics. I was fascinated by how you could push this button and these images would appear and I could see my broken bone. So that was really where it came from.

 So I was pre-med. I did a lot of my pre-med work at Brown, and during the summers I was working in an industry. I was actually in Scott Paper Products industry outside of Philadelphia. And a couple of the other people there who I worked with closely were engineers. And I was just fascinated by it and seemed to be a good way of moving forward my own interest in the physics and the machinery and how it all worked. So I actually switched into engineering. So I switched from Brown to Penn. And being an engineer, it was a great way to make a good living for a year and a half.

And I think as an engineer, and Pat, you can probably attest to this, you think in a certain way; you become very methodical in how you approach things. And while I'm sure there are a lot of other disciplines that will give you a similar type of approach, engineering really does—you're very objective in how you make decisions, and I think that serves well. And then, as I said, going into radiation oncology it was just a match made in heaven, so it all worked out great, I think.

Pat Loehrer: I think I read that your sister was also into math, is that right?

 Dr. Lori Pierce: My sister's a systems engineer with IBM. Incredibly gifted.

Pat Loehrer: Yeah. Tell me about your parents. How did they guide you? What were your role models in terms of both you and your sister, in terms of math, physics, engineering?

Dr. Lori Pierce: I already said my parents were incredibly hardworking and good people. They both had high school graduation education. My mother went straight through, but my father had to get an equivalency for his high school diploma because he was born and raised in North Carolina, had to work on the farm, and didn't get a chance to stay in school. But he got the equivalency of his high school degree.

 It was interesting, my dad was just incredibly gifted for math. My father was just amazing in math. And my father and I always hung out. He was like my best friend and so I think my emphasis on math in part came from my dad. And I’ll say that both my parents didn't, weren’t able to get a college education, but they were two of the smartest people I ever knew. My father and my mother, but I just hang out more with my dad, had amazing common sense and whipsmart math. I'm sure that a lot of where I ended up is because of my dad.

 Dave Johnson: You mentioned that you had family in North Carolina. I remember reading that you were influenced by some of the people you met in North Carolina with respect to your medical career. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I think a Dr. Weaver, was it?

 Dr. Lori Pierce: That's right. Doc Weaver. That’s right. So I used to spend a lot of my summers in North Carolina with my father's family. And Dr. Weaver was an African American family medicine doctor who took care of the vast majority of people of color in the town of where my father's family is from. Whenever anyone had issues and needed medical care, he came to the house. He was the doctor for people of color. I sat back- and take it in a lot when you’re young - people never really know how much you're listening and seeing, but you take in a lot. And you see just how revered he was, and he should have been, because he was largely the face of medicine that a large part of that town saw. And that stuck with me. A couple of times, I went with him when he would see patients. Without a doubt, this factored into my wanting to go into medicine. I think that coupled with my interest in those x-rays and the physics of the x-rays, I think that's how it all came together, but Doc Weaver.

Pat Loehrer: So you mentioned you did a gap year, which was somewhat unusual at that point. I did a gap year as well for the exact same reason - I wanted to not incur a lot of debt or at least try to defer the debt as much as possible. What did you do in your gap year, and how did that impact your medical training or did it?

 Dr. Lori Pierce: It definitely did. My gap year was actually 18 months. I moved to Austin, Texas, and I worked in Round Rock, Texas, that was at a time when Round Rock was just a sleepy little town just north of Austin. I haven’t been back since. I know Dell computers is now there and now it’s almost you can’t see a difference between Austin and ROund rock, but that was not the way it was on those days. And I worked in Round Rock because McNeil Consumer Products was there.

 I worked at McNeil Consumer Products, they make Tylenol. I was the second-shift Glatt supervisor for Tylenol. So Glatt is the machine that mixes up all of the ingredients for Tylenol and it was something that I knew going in that it was only going to be short-lived so I could probably live almost anywhere. And I thought, okay, I’d been on the east coast all my life, let me see what the rest of, another part of the country is like.

 It was an amazing experience. To go from Brown to the University of Pennsylvania, DC, and Philadelphia, to Round Rock, Texas. In retrospect, I couldn’t have picked a better place. I mean I soaked up a little local color, went to some things that the Texans do, and rodeo, that kind of thing. But more importantly, I met people who I would’ve never met on the east coast. These were people who largely had not been outside of the Austin area. One person said she’d never seen a black person before. That kind of surprised me.

 So it was a swath of America that I had not been exposed to. It was not easy. But in the end, it was the best thing, because you realize, people are people. And while you might be put off at first because they’re put off with you and you put off with them, at the end of the day, it was a great experience of getting to know people who can further enrich your life. And I think that has helped me in medicine in terms of interacting with patients no matter where they’re from, no matter what their background, what their financial situation is, people are people.   

 I was on my own. I was truly on my own. And that gap year was invaluable far more than helping me pay off medical school loans.

 Pat Loehrer: You've focused into radiology and obviously there's diagnostic radiology and therapeutic radiology. How did you end up choosing the career that you eventually championed so well?

 Dr. Lori Pierce: At the time I went to medical school at Duke, at Duke, radiation oncology was a division of radiology so they had not separated yet. While I was at Duke, they recruited in their first chair of radiation oncology into separation. So long story short, when you’re at Duke in medical school, your third year is all research. You could go into a lab and do research. And so when I met with my radiology advisor and looked at the list of options of projects I could sign on to, the one that happened to be most interesting was being done by a radiation oncology researcher in radiology. And I thought, well, it looks interesting, but I don’t want to do that because I want to go in radiology so I need to have a radiology project. And my advisor said, “No, it’s okay. Radiology programs, they’ll take radiation experiments. You can still use that and apply to radiology.” So I said “Okay, that looks really interesting.”

So I opted to go with that choice and it was during that year that radiation oncology separated. A chair came in, Dr. Lenny Prosnitz from Yale, and he said, “Why don't you just come down and see what it is that we do?” So when my experiments were set up, I would run down into the basement because we’re always in the basement, and I would follow him around and I just loved it because it gave me the physics that I wanted, I got really interested in cancer biology. And I think with my personality, I work well with patients. I love patients. That patient interaction is when I’m at my best. And I wouldn’t have had that in radiology. With all due respect, radiology is so important, but you have to do what you gravitate toward, and those interactions when I was following him around with patients. So I never looked back, I changed at that point and decided to go into radiation technology. 

 So I was at Penn for residency and chief residency. When I was getting ready to leave to go to the NCI, the person, Barbara Fowble, who was a well-known breast radiation oncologist, took a sabbatical and asked if would I stay the year she was taking sabbatical to run the breast service. So I deferred going to the NCI to stay at Penn for an additional year as an attending and then went to the NCI when she came back from her sabbatical. I worked with Eli when I got to the NCI.

 Pat Loehrer: And Norm Coleman, too?

Dr. Lori Pierce: And Norm from a distance. He’s great. He came in for comedic relief. It was in a while, but he and Eli and Tom Delaney. It was a great time to be at the NCI. It was shortly after that, about a year or so into that when things started changing, Eli left to go to UT Southwestern. But it was a great time to be at the NCI.

Dave Johnson: So you've worked with some of the giants of radiation oncology for sure?

 Dr. Lori Pierce: I did. And the NCI was known as the places where the giants launched. So the Allen Lichters, the Joel Teppers. I mean, I could go through a list. They all had worked with Eli, and Allen was no longer there. Allen had already gone to the University of Michigan. He subsequently recruited me to Michigan. But the radiation oncology branch, the Marc Lippmans of the world, it was a magic time. Even though some of them weren't there, their footprint, their stamp was on the program, and it was really good. And working with Eli was just great.

Dave Johnson: So is that where you're working with Barbara where your interest in breast cancer or was it that you mentioned you had an interest in the biology? Where did that interest in breast cancer originate? 

Dr. Lori Pierce: It came from working with Barbara. So it was a combination. Barbara, who is one of the most amazing people to this day, that I've ever worked with, her command of the data, her synthesis of the data, her interaction with patients. Most people don't appreciate of just how great a clinician Barbara Fowble was. And so it was admiration for that. So she was a part of it, but John Glick was the other part. 

So John, of course, who everyone knows, the giant in the field, and I think at the time, not sure if when I was a resident, he was the president of ASCO. Even if he wasn't the president at that point, he was certainly highly integrated with ASCO, and he kind of took me under his wing. I'm not sure why, but I was very interested in breast cancer. So he would like bring me over to the Med On clinic and teach me more about chemotherapy. So I had John and I had Barbara, and then also the mammography group was very supportive of me. I would come in literally on weekends and meet with the head of mammography, who would test me on mammograms, reading mammograms. So it was just a very supportive environment. And certainly, breast cancer was the area that I wanted to focus on. It was a great group to train under.

Pat Loehrer: Dave and I had the opportunity a short time ago to interview John Glick. And as you're talking, one of the wonderful things about our field of oncology is how it's a close-knit network and there's so much mentoring. And John took both Dave and I underneath his wings, and he had no really rationale for doing that. But Eli, I mean, there are so many wonderful people that we've had the opportunity of meeting. And you yourself have mentored so many other people in another generation. It's hard to explain to people outside of oncology about how special this field is, I think.

Dr. Lori Pierce: It absolutely is. And it's an honor for me to serve as a mentor because once you're a mentor, you always mentor. I mean, John, I'll run things by John to this day. Once you develop that closeness and you know them and they know you, you savor that, it never goes away.

Dave Johnson: What would you tell a junior faculty or fellow are the characteristics of a great leader? What do you think makes for great leadership? 

Dr. Lori Pierce: That's a great question. First and foremost, you listen. You need to listen and understand what your mentee, what it is they're seeking, what it is that they want to study, where they feel they are somewhat inadequate, and they want to improve. What is it that they want to accomplish with that relationship? Because as you and Pat both know, mentors come in all shapes and sizes. Mentors come in all locations. You may have someone who is at your institution where they're coming to you to help to shepherd through your institution and the policies and understand the practice of your institution. You may have those that are mentoring you from afar, or perhaps in addition to content, but also getting a sense of what the outside environment is like. So I think first rule of mentorship is to really understand why that mentee has sought you out and whether you are the right person to fill that void, whatever void that they think that they have. 

I think another part of mentorship is making the time for that individual. We're all very busy people. Most people aren't looking at you to mentor them two hours a day. They are going to be very judicious in what they ask, and you should make sure that what they need, you can accommodate that, and if you can't, perhaps arrange for someone else who can. But in most cases, there's a lot that we all can do for people who approach us. 

And then I think really understanding, kind of putting yourself in their position, where are they in their trajectory toward greatness, and how can you work with that. And I think most of us have a lot that we can share, and a lot of times we may be sharing things, we don't even realize that what we're saying is impactful to those individuals. But I really think it's starting out by listening and being honored that you are actually asked to be a mentor.

Dave Johnson: You've also received numerous teaching awards. You obviously have a gift for that. Tell us, what's the secret to being a good teacher? What are the characteristics of a really great teacher, different than mentoring?

Dr. Lori Pierce: Yeah. You have straightforward conversations with your residents and your fellows. I'll give you an example. We have teaching conferences. And teaching conferences have evolved over the years. I've been at Michigan for a long time, since ‘92. And in the old days, the morning conference, you discussed the literature and you had a discussion, and now it's evolved to slides. The residents give the slides and I'm old school. I like to go back to the old school. Some people call that the Socratic method. I think the Socratic method has gotten a bad rap because you can do the Socratic method in not a threatening way, and you can ask questions to residents and expect for them to give an answer.

And it was interesting, long story short, when I few years into becoming Vice-Provost here, I'm not able to come to morning conferences very often. And I got a knock on my door here in the cancer center, and I opened up and it was the three chief residents. And I said, “Okay. Hi. Come in. What can I do for you?” And so all male, and they said, essentially, “We miss you. Our residents, we all prepare more for your conferences than anyone else. And even though you ask us questions, we don't feel threatened by your questions. We want that type of style of learning.” And I was bowled over by that because I'm just a simple person, and I don't beat around the bush. I ask questions because these are the kind of questions that you have to know when you manage patients. These are the kind of questions that you have to know when you're in a tumor board and you interact with medical oncologists and surgical oncologists. You have to know the literature, and you have to be able to state it in a clear way that, obviously, physicians get it, but patients get it, and you have to be aware of your audience.  

And so that little vignette of when those three knocked at my door told me that, clearly, going back to the basics and just asking questions is well received. 

Pat Loehrer: I'm thinking about your parents who did not go to college, and here you are now a Vice-Provost at one of the most prestigious universities in the country. It's got to be, if you reflect on that really cool. Tell us a little bit about that journey and what it takes. Or was that accidental journey or was this a purposeful journey of leadership that you wanted to go to? 

Dr. Lori Pierce: It was absolutely not purposeful, for sure. So I can thank my dear Dr. Lichter for that. So, Allen Lichter, after he was chair of radiation oncology, as you probably know became the dean of the medical school. Well, Allen, who had brought me to Michigan, got to know me pretty well. And so, when he became dean, Allen's so strategic. He realized that it would be important to have someone from the medical school to work in the provost's office because the medical school is the largest school on campus, and we're the different ones. We approach life somewhat differently.

 

And so to have that perspective in the provost's office would be very helpful. So he came to me and said, “Would you be interested in doing it?” I didn't know what a provost was. I'd heard about it when I was at Brown, but I was like, “No, I'm not interested.” And he said, “Well, just go and talk with them. Meet with the provost of Central Campus and just see.” So I went and decided not to do it. But they did ask, would you just be a special counselor to the provost? If we have questions, we can call on you. So I said, sure. So I did that for a year, and then by the end of the year, had a much better awareness, understanding of what they did in that office, and a much better understanding of who they were, and they me. So I said, “Okay, if I decide to do this, I want it so that you can fire me at any time, and I can fire you at any time, but I'm never giving up my day job in terms of seeing patients. This is always my night and weekend job.” And so that's how we did it. 

And so I've been doing it now for a long time—since 2005, 2006. The reason I've done it so long is we do work with amazing people across campus. We have 19 schools and colleges, and I now am the Vice-Provost for Faculty Affairs for the Health Science Schools. And it allows you to not only look at the university as a whole—we tend to have silos, we tend to live in silos. And when you're the Vice-Provost, you can look beyond those silos and you can bring together people and schools for common threads of work. If I see the nursing school is focusing on certain aspects of cancer treatment XYZ, I can bring together people from the medical school, I can bring together the school of public health and put some funding to it to give them seed funds, to then synthesize something which hopefully will then translate into a larger grant. 

So it is very rewarding in that regard. You oversee promotions, the hiring, and promotions of the faculty, and it further opens your eyes to what can be. And so much of what we do, obviously, in cancer is multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary. We're not just radiation oncology, medical oncology surgeons. So much of what we do in medicine, we interact with public health, we interact with dentistry, we interact with the other health science schools. It has been a very interesting ride in terms of what can happen when you bring like-minded people from different disciplines and you concentrate on a certain topic. And we've started some seed funding. We've had efforts where it really has grown into very significant NIH funding. 

Pat Loehrer: What are you most proud of as a Vice-Provost or your leadership at the university that we wouldn't know about necessarily?

Dr. Lori Pierce: Two things. One, I was one of the key worker bees in changing our policy for time to tenure. We used to have an eight-year tenure clock. And in medicine, we need longer. It's more difficult to get funding, it's more difficult to manage all of the missions that we do and still end up right where you want to be. And so we now have a tenure clock. And so I helped to make that possible. 

In more recent years, probably the jewel for my provost time is getting maternity leave and parental leave. Many academic institutions don't have maternity leave. Women have to take sick leave. I'm sorry, being pregnant is not sick. That's not a sickness. If you're a dad, you want to have time for bonding, you want to have time to be there when your child is born or adopted. And so I and two other people established a policy of maternity leave and parental leave that was wildly accepted. The leadership of the university could not agree more readily. And now we have a very robust policy, and this is not just for faculty, it's for staff. And I get people who thank me all the time, whether they're staff or faculty, especially the dads, for giving them the time to be with their child. So that's an easy question to answer. I think that has been a change that has been received positively throughout.  

And even if it's a case where when a person is gone for their parental leave or maternity leave, other people have to step up to cover for them. But people don't complain because everyone knows that that is the way it should be and that people should be given that time. So it's been one of those win-wins. You don't get win-wins very often, and that's been a win-win.

Dave Johnson: Kudos to you and your colleagues for pushing that through and making that happen. That's got to be a huge recruitment advantage for Michigan. 

Dr. Lori Pierce: It absolutely is. And this is something where industry has done a long time ago. But academia, we have been much slower to adopt those family-friendly policies. And obviously, we are well compensated in our careers. People don't leave usually for the money. It's usually the other pieces. And it's pieces like this where people are recognized and rewarded for being a whole person. And that isn't just bringing in grants, it's also respecting their family lives and their family time.

Dave Johnson: For sure. That was certainly my experience serving as chairman of a department. The things that prompted departure, there were some academic issues, of course, but the main ones were personal. And oftentimes it was family-related, particularly amongst our female faculty, but increasingly so amongst the male faculty as well.

Dr. Lori Pierce: I agree on both counts. That's exactly right. And it's great to see that men want to be present for their children. Having a woman be able to take maternity leave is great, but having a man to take that parental leave is great as well.

Dave Johnson: For sure. So let's pivot over to ASCO. ASCO is a huge professional organization, largely, but certainly not solely comprised of medical oncologists. You're one of the few radiation oncologists to lead that organization. What was that experience like?

Dr. Lori Pierce: Being President of ASCO is without a doubt the highest point of my professional career. ASCO has always been a place where I felt at home. I always felt that ASCO wanted everyone under the tent. So yes, I know it's primarily medical oncology, but ASCO brings everyone together because in order to move the needle in cancer, we all contribute to improved outcomes.

 

So then fast forward to becoming president. I never, ever thought I would be president of ASCO. It wasn't like something I was like, “Oh, I have to be President of ASCO.” No, I just wanted to be active in ASCO and do the right thing. And so you hear you've been nominated and you're very honored, but you're never going to be president, and you find out that you've been voted president. And my time was an unusual time because it was right in the midst of COVID. And so 2021 was completely consumed with COVID. So my predecessor, Skip Burris, he had a normal year up until about March of 2020, and that's when the world shut down. So of course, that was the first ASCO meeting that was virtual.

 

Then my year came and from start to finish, I often tell people, I hope I will be the only president in ASCO history to say that they'd never had an in-person meeting for the entire time that they were president. All my meetings, every single meeting, were via Zoom. Yeah, you're a little disappointed by that, but in some ways, it worked to my advantage because, long story short, when I was voted president and you pick a theme, this was long before COVID; long before we knew the world was going to change, and I wanted to have an equity theme, but I worried that it wouldn't resonate with people. So I said, “Okay, I'm going to do this and just hope that it works well with the membership.”

Well, then you fast forward, and the world changes. You have COVID and you have all these senseless murders that are on TV every night. And so even those who perhaps had their head in the sand before, they got it during COVID: there are so many inequities, and that ended up being, I think, the right theme for that time. And not being able to meet people because of COVID—yes, I missed it, but it was the reason that we missed it because of COVID and the inequities that were borne out during COVID—that really hit home that equity needs to be first and foremost in everyone's mind. 

So it's a long answer to your very short question. It was an amazing time. I think the organization has gotten stronger because of it. So much of work with ASCO was in equity before, but ASCO really upped its game, and equity is now one of those topics that is ingrained in every aspect of the organization, and that is what you have to have to truly affect change.

I remember when I was president-elect, you go through all these interviews, these people want to interview you, and one question they ask or post is what do you want your legacy to be as president? And I was like, you can’t make a legacy in a year with an orientation like ASCO. You make a legacy in a year if you have a lousy organization that you can actually make a huge difference in one year. So what you aspire to do is take a great organization and make it even better during your time as president.

I think we did that. The world is inequitable. We get so many issues here and there and it all ends up with delivering inequitable care that those who have, can get the care and those who don’t have it, cannot. And so I think the biggest challenge is to be able to bring the people to the table who can really make a difference and act on what needs to be done to improve equity in care.

Dave Johnson: Pat has devoted a significant portion of his career to the whole issue of equity and I'm sure would agree with you.

Pat Loehrer: I want to close with this thought, if you will. Dave or I usually just talk about our books that we've read. And one of the books that I mentioned that I just got through reading is entitled The Things We Make. It's by a chemical engineer and biomedical engineer from the University of Illinois, Bill Hammack. And the whole purpose of the book is really kind of defining the differences between science and engineering. He defines engineering as solving problems using rules of thumb that can cause the best change in a poorly understood situation using available resources. 

And he says, in a really tangible way, the scientific method creates knowledge while the engineering method creates solutions. Much of what we do in oncology really is really more engineering than it is science. We're trying to create solutions. He went on to talk about this and it ties into the last comment. He talks about the various technological explosions, eras that have great change occurred when science took a step forward and provided better rules of thumb for the engineers. So there was the Bronze Age and the quantum physics age and even the digital age. I would love for us to come up with the health equity age for which we could work together, taking the advances of science, but using these methods of engineering to make things better with the available resources that we have. And I think if we can do that, I think this would be something that I think we can all be very proud of.

Dr. Lori Pierce: What an amazing summary of that book. And first of all, what amazing work that you have done, and I'm not just saying that—you are walking the walk and talking the talk. And to your point, Dave, of what is the biggest challenge for ASCO, I couldn't have answered it better than what Pat just said. That is it. That's it. That's it. ASCO can do it, but we can't do it alone. ASCO can't do it. Health can't do it alone. This is all hands on deck and it's bringing the other parts of society to the table so that we all understand the enormity of the problem and we have an action plan.

Pat Loehrer: Is there a book you're reading, Lori, that you want to share?

Dr. Lori Pierce: There is. I'm reading a book now called In Shock. It's by Rana Awdish, I don't know if you heard of it. I haven't gotten to the end of it, but just briefly, I met her because she's an ICU Doc at Henry Ford in Detroit and she gave the medical school graduation speech at our graduation a couple of weeks ago. So, in advance of her coming, I wanted to read through her book. It's an autobiography. 

In a nutshell, she had a just horrendous experience, essentially almost died when she was seven months pregnant as a fellow. And she basically bled out and I think it was related to a benign tumor in her liver, which is probably hormonally affected by her pregnancy. And she had sepsis, DIC, liver failure, adrenal failure. So, it goes through what it's like to be on the other side and to be in her own hospital. She wanted to go to her own hospital. She was in ICU in the place that she wasn't attending.

 Her experience though, as a book, really ends up talking about the hope of medicine because now she's thriving. She's well, she and her husband, she lost the pregnancy, then she and her husband now have a child. She's back to being an ICU attending, and she gave her medical school graduation speech two weeks ago. But in that book, you are reminded of the pitfalls in medicine. You're reminded that we as providers often forget that the patient is sitting right there, and she talks about situations where when she's on the vent, someone saying she's sitting right there, “She's circling the drain.” “She's trying to die on us.” “Your kidneys aren't cooperating.” And one resident who came in eating food and took out his back pocket said, “Oh, I'm sorry, I just had a really bad night last night.” She's dying. It's just yet another reminder that we are in this honorable profession. We have the honor of taking care of patients, and we always need to make sure that we respect every patient that we interact with. And so, it's a very interesting book. 

Also, there's another book that I read that's probably been out 15, 20 years, it's called The Art of Racing in the Rain. Do either of you know that? It was a New York bestseller. My husband bought this years ago, it was in our library in the house, and I happened to pull it out. It's about a dog. So, I'm a dog person. I've always had dogs. I love dogs with a passion. And this is a book written in the voice of the dog. It's about this dog named Enzo. And it's humorous, but it's also very emotional in places because it talks about what he does to help his owner, who's a wonderful man, and the wife who ends up dying of a brain tumor. As an oncologist, you could see symptoms, and you knew where that was going, and their daughter, and the things that a dog can do to uplift a human. And even when you're at your lowest point and you're about to give up, and the owner goes through just the most horrible, horrible experiences, and you realize that all of a sudden, something very small can make you then take notice of what is really important to you and can turn the tide. This is a great read. It's a quick read. I highly recommend it. It's called The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. It really is an inspiring story about human resilience. It's a great book. 

Pat Loehrer: Lori, thank you so much for taking time from your incredibly busy schedule to spend a few minutes with Pat and me. We really enjoyed it. And I also want to thank the listeners to Oncology, Etc. an ASCO Educational podcast, where we will talk about oncology medicine and beyond. So, if you have an idea for a topic or a guest you would like for us to interview, by all means, email us at [email protected]. 

To stay up to date with the latest episodes and explore other educational ASCO content, visit education.asco.org. Thanks again. 

And before we go, I have a question for you, Pat. How many ants does it take to fill an apartment? 

Pat Loehrer: I have to cry uncle on this.

Dave Johnson: Ten, tenants.

Pat Loehrer: Tenants. I thought crying uncle was a pretty good response.

Dave Johnson: All right. Thank you, Lori. That was wonderful.

Pat Loehrer: Thanks, Lori. It’s terrific. 

The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions.  

Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.