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Robert A. Winn, M.D., gestured to the crowd in front of him and asked three women in attendance from the Chickahominy Indian Tribe to stand up for recognition.

“I have chased academic excellence my whole life. I am to the point that I am chasing academic relevance,” said Winn, the director and Lipman Chair in Oncology at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. “I am not going anywhere without my community.”

Winn, the keynote speaker at the Society of Behavioral Medicine’s (SBM) 45th Annual Meeting & Scientific Sessions, introduced the tribal citizens as valuable Massey research partners; they are helping to guide the Chickahominy TRUTH Project, which aims to identify a potential environmental connection to cancer cases within a four-mile radius of the Tribal Center in Charles City County, Virginia.

Robert A. Winn, M.D., delivers a keynote address during the 2024 Society of Behavioral Medicine 45th Annual Meeting.

In his keynote address titled “Innovation Does Not Equal Impact for All: Cancer Health Disparities and ZNA,” Winn said scientists can drive results for communities like the Chickahominy when everyone works together.

“There is a critical disconnect between the discovery, translation and diffusion, which limits our impact,” Winn commented. “We have a social responsibility to understand how to bring science to the community.”

That idea was also the focal point of the SBM presidential keynote presented by Bernard F. Fuemmeler, Ph.D., M.P.H., associate director for population science and the Gordon D. Ginder, M.D., Chair in Cancer Research at Massey. The title of his speech was “Where You Come From Matters: Moving Upstream to Get Downstream Change.”

Bernard F. Fuemmeler, Ph.D., M.P.H., delivers the presidential keynote at SBM's 45th Annual Meeting.

Fuemmeler, the SBM 2023-2024 president, noted that behavioral medicine is the area of science that studies how best to enact behavior change to support health and well-being of individuals, families, communities and populations.

“This year we’ve been more focused on how we bring the community into our dialogue and how we improve the conditions of communities where people are born, live, work, play and age to support health,” Fuemmeler said. “Upstream science is about working with communities to address the social drivers – the conditions of neighborhoods in which we live – that affect downstream health conditions and health inequities.”

Fuemmeler told the audience it has been an honor for him to serve as the first Hispanic president of SBM and to be a part of the movement, led by Massey, that integrates community input in research.

“How can we address health equity in society and how can we address structural factors and factors that determine downstream health?” Fuemmeler questioned. “We need to humbly learn from people living within the communities surrounding our academic institutions and center and partner with them to address the conditions that impact health.”

Founded in 1978, SBM is a nonprofit professional society that studies the relationship between human behavior, health and illness. SBM’s 2,400 members represent multiple disciplines, and the organization describes its conference as the largest yearly behavioral medicine gathering in the world. “Moving Behavioral Science Upstream” was the 2024 theme.

This year, more than 40 team members from Massey and across VCU took part in the SBM annual meeting, including three students who presented research. The conference was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from March 13-16.

Written by: Amy Lacey