Fundraising to Continue Legacy of ‘Governor Lurleen’
Posted on November 15, 2005 at 5:00 p.m.
BIRMINGHAM, AL — More than 30 years after the death of Alabama Governor Lurleen Wallace sparked a “Courage Crusade” that eventually built the first cancer radiation treatment site in Alabama, the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center and its community partners are kicking off a new statewide fundraising initiative to replace the now aging facility.
The university has set a $15 million goal in its “Rays of Hope” campaign for donations for the 50,000 square-foot, two-story building and an adjacent green space to be called the “Park of Hope.” The facility, to be located on 18th Street South at 6th Avenue, will have a total cost of $28.5 million and provide both treatment and administrative space for the radiation oncology department. The additional funding will come from a variety of sources, including departmental funds. Officials announced today that groundbreaking is expected in early 2006.
The fundraising initiative will be led by a steering committee of 15 community leaders, including three co-chairs, Barbara Royal, Dianne Mooney and Leighton C. “Foots” Parnell. The UAB Cancer Center Supporters organization has earmarked funds from its annual gala for the project — its goal is $780,000 for the event to be held February 25.
“When Governor Lurleen contracted cancer in the late 1960s and had to go out of state for treatment, Alabama citizens, rich and poor, contributed to a grassroots campaign to raise money for a cancer treatment facility to be built in her home state,” said Mooney, a cancer survivor who is founder and president of Southern Living at Home.
“That effort eventually resulted in the radiation oncology facility, opened in 1976. UAB Hospital now includes modern inpatient nursing units for cancer, but the radiation therapy facility in the Wallace Tumor Institute is still too difficult and expensive to configure for tomorrow’s technologies, and a bright, new facility is very badly needed,” Mooney said.
James A. Bonner, M.D., professor and chair of the UAB Department of Radiation Oncology, said a new facility would give patients several advantages.
“It is critical that we provide an appropriate, separate area for children waiting for treatment,” Bonner said. “Most of our state’s pediatric patients with cancer receive their radiation treatment at UAB, including all from Children’s Hospital. A new facility would have several advantages for patients, including more welcoming treatment and waiting rooms.”
“Secondly,” he said, “much of the newer technology now in the pipeline for delivering radiation treatment requires considerably more space than we have in our current location at the Tumor Institute. This includes the massive linear accelerators and other imaging and treatment equipment that will be the standard for the field.”
He noted that UAB was one of the first 10 institutions in the world to be outfitted with state-of-the-art TomoTherapy, a version of image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT).
Peter Emanuel, M.D., acting director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center, praises Bonner’s tenure as chair of Radiation Oncology. “Few radiation oncology departments in the country have significant research programs, but ours is among a mere handful that has earned a National Institutes of Health grant,” said Emanuel.
UAB radiation specialists are highly focused on the future of cancer treatment — therapies that are tightly targeted at malignant cells and sparing of healthy cells. “Much of the emphasis here involves using pharmaceutical agents that work in synergy with chemotherapy and radiation to achieve greater effect,” said Emanuel. “And Dr. Bonner’s team has achieved acclaim for advancing that science.”
Significant features of UAB radiation oncology:
- The department has doubled its faculty, allowing each member to specialize in one or two disease sites; Bonner, for example, is involved in head and neck cancer treatment.
- It has seven physicists on staff to help design treatment strategies and provide quality assurance; most hospitals rely on a pool of physicists who rotate to various facilities.
- The department holds a $3.6 million grant from the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Disparities Research Partnerships Programs. It brought to UAB a sophisticated videoconferencing system linking UAB radiation oncologists with a community cancer center in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
- The department provides more than 30,000 treatments annually.
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