In November 2006, Dr. John Leonard (Dept. of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College) contacted Dr. Geri Gay (Chair, Dept. of Communication) to examine possible opportunities for collaboration.  Soon thereafter, a bicampus group comprised of researchers and faculty members from two Cornell campuses (Drs. John Leonard and Andrew Dannenberg from Weill, and Drs. Geri Gay, Katherine McComas and Sahara Byrne from Ithaca) began a concerted effort to merge our two programs’ interests in medical communication. The goals are to draw on our unique strengths while addressing important social and patient care issues.

The project’s first efforts led to the development of a research proposal to investigate factors influencing patient enrollment in clinical trials. We’ve chosen to call this project IMPACT - Improving Methods for Patient Accrual in Clinical Trials. We secured funding from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) for Phase I of the research. Instrumental to the development of the proposal was Janet Yang, a Communication doctoral student, who will work on this project as part of her dissertation.