The Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO (CCF) is proud to announce the winners of the 2016 CCF Merit Awards of the Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium. This year’s twelve recipients, who are recognized for their commitment to furthering quality cancer care and their valuable research contributions in this area of study, presented their research at the Symposium in San Francisco, California on September 9 and 10.

The recipients and their abstracts are as follows:

• Sanders Chang, BS, MS, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
  Multidisciplinary tumor board improves oncology collaboration in advanced cancer patients.
• Michael A. Garcia, MD, MS, University of California, San Francisco
  Acute pain management in radiation oncology: Quality of care and the impact of an integrated palliative oncology service.
• Casey M. Hay, MD, Magee-Women’s Hospital of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
  Strategies for introducing outpatient specialty palliative care in gynecologic oncology.
• Steven Lau, MD, PhD, University of Texas Southwestern
  Impact of cachexia at diagnosis on radiotherapy utilization and survival in non-small cell lung cancer.
• Richard Jirui Lin, MD, PhD, New York University Langone Medical Center
  Polypharmacy and potentially inappropriate medication use contribute to inferior survival in older patients with aggressive lymphoma.
• Ryan David Nipp, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital
  Symptom burden predicts health care utilization in hospitalized patients with incurable cancer.
• Deirdre R. Pachman, MD, Mayo Clinic
  Pilot study of minocycline for the prevention of paclitaxel-associated neuropathy: ACCRU RU221408I.
• Lindsay Puckett, MD, Northwell Health System
  Palliative treatment directives for bone metastases: A quality-directed approach to guiding institutional.
• Adam Sterman, MD, Children's Hospital at Montefiore
  The effect of connexin 36 deletion on chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN).
• Joelle P. Straehla, MD, University of Washington
  The benefits and burdens of cancer: A prospective, longitudinal cohort study of adolescents and young adults.
•  Winnie S. Wang, MD, University of California, San Diego
  Blood transfusions at end of life for stem cell transplant patients.
• Randy Wei, MD, PhD, University of California, Irvine
  Attitudes of radiation oncologists toward palliative and supportive care in the United States: Report on National Membership Survey by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).

The 2016 Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO Merit Awards of the Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium are supported by Amgen; AstraZeneca; Celgene Corporation; Conquer Cancer Foundation; Gilead Sciences, Inc.; Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals Inc; Janssen Oncology; Lilly; Spectrum Pharmaceuticals; and Takeda Oncology.