August 2021

Greetings everyone,

Well now that August is here, we can certainly call this “the dog days of summer.” I daresay that when we were younger, time seemed to slow down over the summer months, but that certainly hasn’t been the case for us at WSCR-NCORP. Since just about this time last year, we have been heavily engaged in a strategic planning process. Throughout the year, led by Decio Mendez of Flyn Consulting and our executive leadership, several members of our staff worked on subcommittees alongside a subset of our board members.  I am happy to report that we were able to present the findings of that work to our board of trustees during a retreat on Saturday, July 24th.

At this point, I’m not at liberty to say much about what we presented, but I can say that the board and our team are very excited about the direction we are going and the vision we are creating. Our goal is to develop a business model that is innovative, robust and sustainable out of which we can continue to be true to our mission of bringing cancer clinical studies into local communities for the broadest array of patients in need of access. We will provide updates throughout the coming year as we begin to actualize elements of our strategic plan.

On other fronts, I am happy to report that we received our NCI NCORP grant notification for the coming year and we received the full grant amount!  While the amount we receive from the grant award is not nearly enough to cover our costs, it is significant that we have support of the NCI.  Being an NCI affiliate is an honor and a badge of distinction.  We are grateful to be one of 34 NCORP organizations across the country.

As I mentioned above, our grant award does not cover all our expenses, so we have to rely on donor contributions, events, and grants from other organizations. In the next couple of months, we have a couple of events I want to highlight here. This month is our Drive for the Cure golf tournament on August 9^th at Valley Country Club. On September 17^th, we will host our 4th annual Rock with the Docs event at Clancy’s Irish Pub in Wheat Ridge.  If you cannot attend either of those events, but would like to make a tax-deductible contribution, please go to our website and click on the Donate button.

I’m also happy to report that our patient education outreach events will be happening live this year (as long as the COVID precautions remain as they are now). Mark your calendars for October 11^th at 12:00 when Dr. Dave Gordon will be speaking on cannabis and cancer.  The event will be held on the main level of the building housing Rose Community Foundation.  If you are receiving this e-newsletter, you will be receiving an invitation for that event in the next few weeks.

We hope to see you at one or all of the upcoming events.  In the meantime, enjoy the last days of summer.

Be well and take care of yourselves and each other.