ASTROnews: International Outreach Program Allows ASTRO Members to Help Radiation Oncologists in Need

Did you know that a colleague in Inner Mongolia is interested in establishing a long-term collaborative relationship with an academic institution in the U.S.? Or how about another colleague in rural China who could benefit from the donation of an ion chamber? In Africa, a radiation oncologist feels that his care of cancer patients could be improved if he had access to a radiation oncologist in North America with a particular interest in head and neck cancer. These were just a few of the collected responses from a solicitation campaign sponsored by ASTRO’s International Education Subcommittee (IES) with assistance from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to gather data for its new International Outreach Program (IOP), which launched October 30.

The International Outreach Program (IOP) is an online marketplace that matches volunteer resources with the needs of radiation oncologists from around the world.

From an extensive list provided by the IAEA, ASTRO mailed more than 1,800 surveys to centers that could potentially benefit from a donation of resources such as educational materials, physics equipment and/or advice from a radiation oncologist, medical physicist or radiobiologist. Janet Mitchell, ASTRO staff liaison to the committee, said she was stirred by some of the responses she received.

“Some of the responses were attached with a passionate and heart-warming letter of appreciation and gratitude for ASTRO’s new outreach program, and some grabbed my attention because of their specific need,” Mitchell said, referring to a cancer center in Belarus that requested advice on treating patients from Chernobyl.

ASTRO members interested in volunteering time, expertise or equipment can now consult a database accessible through the “Members’ Only” portion of the ASTRO Web site that allows you to search by country of interest or by specific categories of needs. A search engine will bring a list of radiation oncology centers and/or the specific need of interest and if you find a good match, you can select to fulfill that need.

“Facilitating the volunteer outreach interests of ASTRO members has been an acknowledged part of ASTRO’s mission for a number of years,” said Terry J. Wall, J.D., M.D., ASTRO’s coordinator of humanitarian outreach since the project’s inception. “The new database will make the process more efficient than ever. The program, now hugely expanded, used to run out of several notebooks on my back bookshelf. Thankfully, we have outgrown that.”

Last spring, Dr. Wall represented ASTRO at an IAEA conference in Vienna, Austria, to further publicize the new initiative and to solicit further information on the needs of his international colleagues.

ASTRO’s role in the process is to connect interested volunteers to needs they might be able and interested in satisfying. ASTRO has no funds for travel, shipping, staff, etc., and undertakes no ongoing obligations to either the ASTRO volunteer or the recipient.

“It’s like a dating service,” Dr. Wall said. “ASTRO makes the initial introduction, and after that, it’s up to the parties to establish and maintain the relationship.”

Dr. Wall also said that the majority of the “five figure” cost of developing the searchable database was provided by anonymous donors. ASTRO donated the staff time of Mitchell and Amy Kapinus, the Society’s Webmaster.

It is hoped, however, that ongoing collaborations will enhance ties between ASTRO members and those around the globe providing radiation oncology services to cancer patients in developing nations. Several U.S. academic programs maintain ties with specific departments in emerging nations, and Dr. Wall says he hopes that larger private practices will also pioneer long-term partnerships around the world.

“Much of the medical progress that is made in trying to assist colleagues in other societies seems to proceed more slowly and out of established long-term relationships than the more commercial ‘just-now needs, isolated transaction paradigm’ that might be more familiar to Westerners,” he said.

Mitchell said that ASTRO’s International Outreach Program has the opportunity to collaborate with other societies, including RSNA and the ACR, to provide information about our international service.

“Communication amongst other societies expands the opportunities for humanitarian outreach and displays a shared commitment and importance for international service,” she said. “Ultimately, the overall success of the program rests in the hands of our members and their ability to fulfill someone’s needs.”

For more information on the program, contact Mitchell at janetm@astro.org or internationaloutreach@astro.org.

-Nicole Napoli, publications specialist

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