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This is the third blog post in a 6-part series recognizing the achievements of the 2026 ACCC Innovator Award winners before their in-depth sessions at the ACCC 43rd National Oncology Conference. Learn more about the innovations being recognized this year and those who pioneered them by joining ACCC in Boston, Massachusetts, from October 21-23, 2026.
Where a person lives in the US greatly influences both the quality of the cancer care they receive and their treatment outcomes. With an ever-growing mortality gap between patients living in urban and rural areas and more than half of patients in rural communities struggling to afford their cancer care, implementing thoughtful, targeted outreach in rural regions is more important than ever.
Many cancer centers hire staff for this purpose through their Community Outreach and Engagement office, who then travel periodically to the community, deliver the interventions, and return back to the center. Although this model can be effective, the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, opted for a different approach—one that utilized the experiential knowledge of local community members to conduct outreach and deliver evidence-based interventions.
Winship developed an “Embedded Community Staff” model, which provides funding to community partners that hire local individuals who are deeply familiar with their communities, their needs, and their resources. These staff are trained by the cancer center and supervised by community partners, but live and work in their own communities as opposed to the cancer center’s location.
Through Winship’s partnership with three regional cancer coalitions—which work primarily with rural and low socioeconomic status populations in Georgia and cover 101 of the state’s 159 counties—staff members have delivered more than 1.5 million evidence-based interventions since 2022, resulting in an economic impact of $3,235,788 per year and the receipt of a 2026 ACCC Innovator Award.
In anticipation of the ACCC 43rd National Oncology Conference this fall, ACCCBuzz spoke with Theresa Gillespie, PhD, MA, FAAN, a Professor and the Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement at Winship Cancer Institute, to learn more about the program.
ACCCBuzz: How long has Winship Cancer Institute been an ACCC member?
Dr. Gillespie: We’ve been a member since 2011.
ACCCBuzz: What do you enjoy most about being an ACCC member? Are there specific programs, resources, or tools that you use at your cancer program?
Dr. Gillespie: We recently launched a major initiative to enhance accrual to clinical trials. One of the first interventions we did involved addressing implicit bias, and to do that, we adapted the ASCO [American Society of Clinical Oncology] and ACCC “Just Ask” program. All of our staff and clinicians involved with patient recruitment and clinical trials were required to complete that program, which included hundreds of people. Emory was also one of the pilot sites for the Just Ask program. The implicit bias training was fantastic, and we really appreciate the work ACCC did in developing and rolling out the program.
ACCCBuzz: What makes your cancer center unique?
Dr. Gillespie: We’re the only NCI–designated comprehensive cancer center in the entire state of Georgia. Our state is home to over 11 million people, and about 75% of the state, or 120 of our 159 counties, is rural. The bulk of our population resides in metro Atlanta, but a lot of the needs are outside the city. Nationwide, as well as in Georgia, so many hospitals in rural and medically underserved areas have had to close over the years, meaning these individuals no longer have local access to obstetricians, radiologists, and oncologists. In light of that trend, we have made a concerted effort to reach beyond metro Atlanta to the rural counties and consider how we can increase access to prevention, screening, clinical trials, and quality cancer care.
Our rural population has been a really important focus for Winship; we have a strong commitment to serving our catchment area. We know those people have increased risk factors and increased mortality, so their outcomes are worse than those living in the more urban areas. Rural residents may have to drive through several counties just to get to a hospital to deliver a baby. And they may have to go even farther to get to an oncologist, and even farther to a radiation center.
ACCCBuzz: It can be challenging for administrators and C-suite members to share a common language with clinicians and others who provide direct patient care. Can you share any tips you used to obtain buy-in and support for your innovation?
Dr. Gillespie: People in the upper echelons of the institution may not always grasp the importance of the innovation at first, particularly if they’re looking at the bottom line, asking, “How is that benefiting the institution? How is that increasing market share? How is that bringing in more clinical revenue?”
You need to meet people where they are on both sides of the equation. Those in the C-suite need to appreciate that if you’re promoting screening in underserved areas, you’re going to find some cancers or other diseases, and those people may well end up getting care at your institution and generating revenue. That brings in a direct return on investment.
On the other side, you also need to appreciate that people who are underserved or underrepresented don’t necessarily want someone from the institution visiting sporadically and telling them what they have to offer for their health and their community. That’s why we’ve gone another route by partnering with communities so that the help is coming from the individuals they already know and trust, but with the support and resources of the cancer center.
ACCCBuzz: ACCC president Una Hopkins, DNP, MSN, FNP-BC, NE-BC, RN, FACCC, centered her theme on Designing Oncology Care to Meet the Needs of a Growing Patient Population. A key component of that theme is Capacity Building at Scale, which was key to your innovation. Can you share one insight you’ve learned in this area?
Dr. Gillespie: One of the things we know about rural and underserved areas is that if providers aren’t from those areas, they don’t necessarily go there to practice or deliver care. We have a grant from the National Cancer Institute to support a different initiative that targets rural high school students. We transport them by bus to Emory’s campus, then they work with cancer researchers as faculty mentors to complete a project in cancer research.
Our thought in doing this is that by targeting people who are from rural areas, there is a greater likelihood that, as they develop their careers down the road, they will go back to practice in rural areas; the data support that. But it can be difficult to get to those people, so we have to bring them to us. With the delivery of care, it’s the opposite: We have to bring the care to them. For the delivery of evidence-based interventions in rural areas, the model we have is not only successful in Georgia, but also lends itself well to being adapted in other rural areas. In this way, we can help build capacity to deliver these interventions more efficiently and from a more cost-effective approach.
We must always think about the needs of the population and the best way to meet those needs. Community stakeholders are essential in that they inform both needs and best practices. Capacity building is key in that regard.
To learn more about Winship Cancer Institute’s Embedded Community Staff model, join Dr. Gillespie and her fellow 2026 ACCC Innovator Award winners in Boston this October for the 43rd National Oncology Conference.
