Action Steps to Address Inequities in Cancer Care Access, Treatment, and Outcomes in Your Community

Dr. Cook is a clinical psychologist experienced in providing integrated behavioral health services in primary care clinics and hospitals serving diverse and resilient urban and rural populations. He received his masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Missouri – Columbia. He completed his internship at Cook County Stroger Hospital, the major public hospital in Chicago.

Scott worked for eight years in leadership and clinical roles in research, behavioral health, youth services, and community services at Howard Brown Health, serving the diverse LGBTQIA+ communities of Chicago. He was the deputy director of Finding Answers, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a faculty member for the Taking Action on Overuse Fellowship program, and serves on the FamiliesUSA Health Equity Task Force.

He works at UChicago Medicine in quality improvement and organizational development roles to eliminate health inequities. He also partners with his teammates to advance the organization’s equity, diversity, and inclusion innovation agenda. He co-directs the Advancing Health Equity: Leading Care, Payment, and Systems Transformation program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, based at the University of Chicago. Dr. Cook is a founding co-chair of the University of Chicago LGBT+ Resource Group, a recipient of the University’s Diversity Leadership Award and has volunteered in multiple capacities in community organizations, including serving eight years in various leadership positions as a board member of TPAN.

Aung Naing, MD, FACP, is Professor and Lead of the Immunotherapy Working Group in the Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Naing has extensive experience developing first-in-human, early-phase clinical trials including several immunotherapy-based trials.

Dr. Naing’s research focuses on clinical translation of basic immunobiology and is aimed at identifying biomarkers to predict response, resistance, and immune-related adverse events associated with immunotherapies. He has authored and co-authored more than 270 original research articles in high-impact journals such as Cell, Lancet Oncology, Cancer Cell, and Journal of Clinical Oncology. Recently, he edited the fourth edition of the book entitled “Immunotherapy” published by Springer International Publishing AG. He also serves as the course director for a Tumor Immunology course at the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

As an expert in developmental therapeutics, Dr. Naing has served as a discussant for poster presentations in ASCO, AACR and SITC annual meetings. He has also served as a member on several working groups and review boards. Notably, he led the skin toxicities working group and served as a member of the gastrointestinal toxicity working group of the ASCO management of immune-mediated side effects guideline panel that developed the clinical practice guidelines on the management of immune-mediated side effects associated with immunotherapy. Dr. Naing is also a member of the SITC Immune Biomarkers Task Force, which functions with a goal of identifying the critical next steps in obtaining and handling biospecimens, biomarker identification, data and specimen sharing, and multi-disciplinary collaboration. He spearheaded MD Anderson’s collaborative effort with Project Ronin to develop a mobile app, which was launched recently to provide a ready-to-use look-up tool on management of immunotherapy-related toxicities. He is also the course director for Tumor Immunology course at the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston.

Dr. Ana Velázquez Mañana is a thoracic oncologist and Assistant Professor of Medicine in the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Division of Hematology/Oncology at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital in California. As a Latina, she advocates for workforce diversity and gender equity and has been named the Assistant Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility for Training of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCSF. Dr. Velázquez completed her MD at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, a Master of Biomedical Science at Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (formerly known as Mayo Graduate School), and her Internal Medicine residency at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, where she was a Chief Resident. She joined UCSF in 2018, where she completed her clinical fellowship in Medical Oncology and postdoctoral research fellowship in the National Clinician Scholars Program.

Dr. Velázquez is a member of the prestigious John A. Watson Faculty Scholars Class of 2022 at UCSF and has been awarded a Conquer Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Award. She aims to support and improve the outcomes of patients with lung cancer from vulnerable backgrounds using health services and disparities research.