American Cancer Society & Flatiron Health Launch Real-World Data Impact Award

The American Cancer Society (ACS) and Flatiron Health today announced the launch of the American Cancer Society & Flatiron Health Real-World Data Impact Award. This joint grant-making program supports both organizations’ goals of accelerating cancer research and improving treatment and care options for patients.

ACS and Flatiron designed the program to advance patient-centric research among investigators currently funded by the ACS. Up to three grants in the amount of $75,000 each will be awarded during 2020 to existing ACS grantees with experience in health services or observational research. ACS will oversee the grant selection process and Flatiron will provide selected grantees research funding and access to its de-identified oncology datasets curated from electronic health records for research purposes.

Research could include characterizing healthcare disparities in treatment and outcomes among underserved populations in the US; evaluating national healthcare policy impact on practice patterns and patient outcomes; comparing effectiveness of treatments unlikely to be addressed by clinical trials; assessing impact of clinical guidelines on treatment and outcomes; and more.

“The ACS understands the incredible potential real-world data has for furthering our knowledge of patients’ experiences to improve patient outcomes,” said William Phelps, PhD, Senior Vice President for Extramural Research. “These new grants present a unique opportunity to expand the scope of questions our researchers are able to answer by working with some of the highest-quality de-identified real-world datasets available. We look forward to the groundbreaking work our researchers will undertake with the help of this grant.”

“These competitive awards will allow researchers to study important topics that can’t necessarily be addressed by clinical trials,” said Dr. Neal Meropol, Vice President of Research Oncology at Flatiron. “By providing financial support and access to Flatiron’s de-identified datasets, we can help researchers answer some of today’s most pressing and difficult questions, all in an effort to help achieve Flatiron’s mission: improving lives by learning from the experience of every cancer patient.”

Eligible grantees have been sent individual communication about this funding opportunity. A letter of intent process will be used to invite applications for the April 15, 2020 deadline. Current ACS grantees may contact grants.eligibility@cancer.org for more details.