History and Background
The Michigan Cancer Research Consortium (MCRC) includes medical centers that have met the highest standards of excellence in conducting cancer clinical trials. MCRC has sites in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida that enroll hundreds of patients each year in 130+ clinical trials, including cancer care delivery research studies. MCRC includes over 200 medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, surgeons, and other specialists.
MCRC was established in 1994 at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which resides within one of the nation’s largest healthcare systems, Trinity Health, based out of Livonia, Michigan. The MCRC continues to expand its program and add new component hospitals both within and outside of Trinity Health. Currently, the major Michigan health centers within MCRC are:
MCRC also includes these major sites:
View the full listing of Affiliates and Sub-Affiliates on the NCORP website.
Scientific Strengths and Expertise
We demonstrate a variety of strengths that apply to our work with the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN). Multiple physician champions and teams across MCRC are key to our success in enrolling patients in trials and caring for them. Examples of our contributions to ECOG-ACRIN include:
Staff Engagement and Quality Assurance Efforts
The research nursing teams at our sites support all enrollments and patient case management. They bring a wealth of experience in cancer clinical trials.
We are currently preparing for an upcoming ECOG-ACRIN audit. Our data management team, research nurses, and managers, all highly experienced in data and healthcare quality, are partners in compiling and conducting pre-audit reviews of patient charts. We recently streamlined our audit preparation to improve the organization and transparency of the work within our large team. As part of audit follow-up, we have also adopted healthcare quality improvement tools, such as Root Cause Analysis, to align with our organization’s rollout of TogetherSafe, an initiative to promote The Journey to High Reliability. In MCRC, we aim for clinical research and quality to go hand in hand.
Leadership Transition
MCRC is currently undergoing an exciting time of change and collaborative exploration. Upon the retirement of both our prior principal investigator, Philip Stella, MD, and director, Beth LaVasseur, MS, RN, who co-founded MCRC, a transition to new leadership occurred in 2022.
Dr. Al baghdadi now leads MCRC as PI after more than 3 years as co-PI. He is board certified in both medical oncology and hematology. He has served as study chair for numerous research protocols and contributes service to both the NCI and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) through committee memberships. Most recently, Dr. Al baghdadi was elected to an upcoming 3-year term on the NCI Lymphoma Steering Committee. He is completing a term on the NCI Leukemia Steering Committee.
Our new director of oncology research, Rose Juhasz, PhD (pictured above), joined MCRC in February. She is a research psychologist by training who worked for 16 years within Michigan Medicine. Most recently, Dr. Juhasz managed system-wide quality and patient experience reporting initiatives, using innovative approaches in both analytics and implementation science. In prior research work, she was a member and then administrative leader of large-scale, multidisciplinary teams focused on substance abuse and cancer care delivery research, which were well-funded by both the NCI and the American Cancer Society.
Looking Towards the Future with Our Team
Together, we see a bright future for MCRC as we continue to grow our work with NCORP Research Bases and other external and internal partners. Our aim is to increase innovation, efficiencies, and impact in our research, supporting the latest discoveries in cancer care that are meaningful to patients, families, and providers. We are excited to help lead the oncology field to become even more evidence-based, patient-centric, and equitable to all patients who seek care in our community settings. We could not do this without all our consortium partners and MCRC home office team of over 30 staff from our nursing, pharmacy, data management, biorepository, regulatory affairs, and administration units (pictured in the collage). Thank you MCRC and ECOG-ACRIN team for all you do to maintain our successful collaboration and produce solid results for so many years!