Board of Directors – Undesignated Member
Dr. Polite is a professor of medicine, deputy section chief, executive medical director for Cancer Accountable Care at the University of Chicago and was recently appointed chief physician for the University of Chicago Medicine’s new facility in Northwest Indiana. He briefly served on the ASCO Board of Directors from 2019 to 2020 and currently serves on ASCO’s PAC Advisory Council, State of Cancer Care in America (SOCCA) Publications Group, and Clinical Practice Committee. Dr. Polite is past chair of ASCO’s Health Disparities Committee, Clinical Practice Committee, and Health Policy Leadership Development Program Oversight Work Group and was a two-time chair of the Government Relations Committee. He is a past participant of the Leadership Development Program and received a Career Development Award in 2008 from Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation.
Why do you want to serve on the ASCO Board of Directors?
I want to take the lessons I have learned from my many years in ASCO leadership and help shape the future of our Society. I would humbly argue that I am among a small group of volunteers who has helped lead many of the strategic priorities of ASCO. I am past chair of the Government Relations Committee and have served as the chair of this committee twice. I just finished chairing the Clinical Practice Committee and I also served as the chair of the Disparity Committee. In addition, I served on the Value Task Force and the Payment Reform Working Group where I helped develop ASCO’s Alternative Payment model (PCOP) as well as on the ASCO MACRA implementation committee. I am currently a member of the Patient Centered Cancer Care Certification Pilot Program Task Force which is piloting the future of quality and value evaluation by ASCO. I am also a graduate of ASCO’s Leadership Development Program. Finally, I was honored and humbled to serve on the Board of Directors for an abbreviated term where I filled out the term of Arti Hurria after her tragic death. This further opened my eyes to the tremendous responsibility of the position and the opportunities and challenges facing our society.
Through these positions, I have been involved in some of the most difficult issues facing our organization such as the Part B payment reform regulation that would have significantly cut payments to oncologists. ASCO, along with COA, were the lead organizations in getting this regulation pulled. I was also the lead author on our policy statement on oncology drug prices that will set our position for an issue that will only grow in importance. I have witnessed firsthand the tremendous impact ASCO can play in the rapidly changing payment environment. If we want medicine to be practiced the way we believe it must be, then physician groups like ASCO must step up and take the intellectual lead. Doing this requires strong vision from ASCO leadership at the Board of Directors level. It also requires members who are intimately familiar with many of these external challenges to our profession and have thought through how we should position ourselves. This will be particularly true now that we have formed our C6 ASCO Association and formally launched the ASCO PAC. As a member of the PAC board, I have been involved in the formation and strategic growth plan for the PAC.