The members of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) elected seven new officers to the society’s Board of Directors, including Howard Sandler, MD, FASTRO, as President-Elect; Michael Kuettel, MD, PhD, MBA, FASTRO, as Secretary/Treasurer-Elect; Iris C. Gibbs, MD, FASTRO, and Curtiland Deville, Jr, MD, as Chair and Vice Chair, respectively, of ASTRO’s newly formed Health Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (HEDI) Council; Douglas Martin, MD, FASTRO, as Clinical Affairs and Quality Council Vice Chair; Chelsea Pinnix, MD, PhD, as Education Council Vice Chair; and Casey Chollet-Lipscomb, MD, as Government Relations Council Vice Chair.
The officers will begin their terms in October during the 2022 ASTRO Annual Meeting in San Antonio. Dr. Sandler will serve a 1-year term as President-Elect, followed by single-year terms as President, Chair, and Immediate Past Chair of the ASTRO Board. Dr. Gibbs will serve a 2-year term as HEDI Chair. Drs. Deville, Martin, Pinnix, and Chollet-Lipscomb will serve 2-year terms as Vice Chairs, followed by 2-year terms as Chairs of their respective councils.
In his tenure as President-Elect and eventual Chair of ASTRO, Dr. Sandler will focus on the society’s priority issues, including the delivery of high-quality, high-value patient care, advancing equitable oncology care and cultivating a diverse workforce, shaping health policy to support radiation oncologists and their patients, and multidisciplinary collaboration to achieve excellent outcomes for patients. Dr. Sandler said his priorities will be “to advance the field’s commitment to equity and diversity in patient care and our workforce, to support and expand the research that delivers better treatments for our future patients, and to work with the governmental entities that shape the future of America’s health care as an advocate for radiation oncology.”
Dr. Sandler is the Ronald H. Bloom Professor and Chair of Radiation Oncology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He is a nationally recognized expert in genitourinary cancers, with more than a decade of experience as Chair of the RTOG/NRG Oncology committee that designed and oversaw prostate cancer clinical trials.
Dr. Sandler also has an extensive record of service to ASTRO and the oncology field. He currently serves on the Board of Directors as Chair of ASTRO’s Government Relations Council and is a long-term member of ASTRO’s Prostate/GU Resource Panel.
