ACCC Remembers Dr. Harold P. Freeman Pioneer of Patient Navigation and Health Equity

ACCC Remembers Dr. Harold P. Freeman Pioneer of Patient Navigation and Health Equity

A Statement from the Association of Cancer Care Centers (ACCC)

ACCC joins the oncology community in mourning the death of Harold P. Freeman, MD, a world-renowned expert on and advocate for health equity and the pioneer of patient navigation services in oncology. Dr. Freeman passed away on August 11, 2026; he was 93.

Dr. Freeman is considered the father of patient navigation, first identifying the social and economic barriers to breast cancer screening, follow-up, and treatment through conversations with his own patients at a free clinic he established at Harlem Hospital Center. Throughout his career, Dr. Freeman advocated tirelessly for patients who faced worse cancer outcomes because of race- and poverty-based health disparities—in his own clinical practice, in his published research, in the halls of Congress, and in advising sitting U.S. presidents. Patient navigation has since grown into its own discipline of comprehensive care coordination centered on the whole patient, their family, and their community.

ACCC’s own history with Dr. Freeman dates back to 2009, when he sat for an interview for ACCC’s seminal publication, Cancer Care Patient Navigation: A Practical Guide for Community Cancer Centers. In it, Dr. Freeman described the model he had built at Harlem Hospital in plain terms, “The navigator’s job is to see the entire movement of the patient across disciplines,” he said. “One of the problems in medicine is that we have excellent areas— excellent surgeons, excellent radiation departments—but the patient doesn’t easily pass through one part into another. So we are working across disciplines that have to be bridged through this navigation.” That conversation helped shape ACCC’s patient navigation and financial navigation educational programming in the years since.

ACCC offers its sincerest condolences to Dr. Freeman’s family and friends, colleagues and collaborators, and the countless patients whose lives have been improved by his work.

Read more about Dr. Freeman’s life and work in an obituary shared by his family.