Edward E. Partridge, M.D., has been named the new director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center. Partridge, 59, has served as interim director for the past year.

“We have been trying to convince Ed for nearly three years that he is the best person to lead our program,” Robert Rich, M.D., senior vice president and dean of the UAB School of Medicine said at the press conference announcing that Edward Partridge, M.D. is the new director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center.

During the past year, Ed has been instrumental in shaping the future of the center, ensuring that we remain one of the premier cancer centers in the nation,” said Robert Rich, M.D., senior vice president and dean of the UAB School of Medicine. “He is leading the effort as we prepare our renewal application to the National Institutes of Health, which will enable us to continue to respond to meet the needs of our patients, researchers, staff and colleagues throughout the world.”

The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center moved up five notches in the U.S. News & World Report “Best Hospitals” ranking, to No. 18; the magazine’s 2007 rankings were published July 13.

“We have been trying to convince Ed for nearly three years that he is the best person to lead our program,” Rich said. “We finally have succeeded.”

Life’s work
Partridge is well known for his expertise as a clinician and researcher specializing in gynecological cancer. He has spent his entire career at UAB, working to improve the lives of Alabamians and people around the world.

“It is an honor and a privilege to lead the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center and all it represents,” Partridge said. “As a native of Demopolis, I have for my entire life witnessed the health issues our state faces. To positively impact the health care of Alabamians has been a principle that has guided my professional career. I look forward to helping our physicians, researchers and all our health care providers as we strive to find improved ways to prevent, detect early and treat cancer in the men and women we serve.”

Partridge is the principal investigator for the Deep South Network for Cancer Control, a community-based participatory research network that provides cancer education, prevention and screening activities in the community. Partridge also is the principal investigator for the Morehouse School of Medicine/Tuskegee University/UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center Partnership, a grant that pairs UAB investigators with those at historically black colleges and universities to enhance cancer health-disparity research.

He has a distinguished academic record, with more than 130 peer-reviewed publications. He is a leader in Alabama medicine, and past president of the Jefferson County Medical Society, the Alabama Society of Clinical Oncology and the Alabama Chapter of the American College of Surgeons.

On the national level he has been chair of the Commission on Cancer for the American College of Surgeons, and he chairs of the board of the Mid South Division of the American Cancer Society and serves on the National Board of Directors of the ACS.

A graduate of the UAB School of Medicine, Partridge performed his residency in obstetrics and gynecology at UAB and joined the UAB faculty in 1976 as an instructor. He was named a scientist in the cancer center and director of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology in 1990.

In 1999, Partridge was named to the Margaret Cameron Spain Chair in Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center is one of the original eight centers so designated by the National Institutes of Health. The center received $50 million for facilities and $10 million in new ongoing support from the state this year to address capital needs and to recruit new faculty physicians.