LEONARD ROSEN’S LEGACY:
The Leonard M. Rosen Memorial Research Award honors Leonard Rosen’s many years of service on our Board of Directors, as chairman and founding member. Leonard was the proud grandfather of a child treated successfully for cancer. He was a brilliant and astute advocate, who worked to advance research and regulations that could improve the effectiveness of childhood cancer therapies. Leonard was a founding partner of Wachtell Rosen Lipton & Katz, a prominent New York City law firm.
In tribute to his legacy, the Rosen Award has been granted annually since 2016 to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to childhood cancer policy and advocacy, recognizing the importance and unique challenges associated with the care and treatment of children with cancer.
2023 RECIPIENT
Steven Joffe, MD, MPH | Chair, Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine
Dr. Joffe is a pediatric oncologist with specialty in the ethical complexities of pediatric oncology research. At the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, Dr. Joffe is Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy and the Art and Ilene Penn Professor. As a renowned leader in bioethics, Dr. Joffe was elected in 2022 as a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
“Even as we push to try to improve cancer treatments for kids as quickly as we can, one of the things I try to focus on is to ensure we do it in a way that is intentional and respectful and ethical,” said Dr. Joffe in his acceptance remarks.
“There’s obviously a ton more work to be done, but [in the past 50 years] we’ve come an incredibly long way. And a critical reason for that is because of the advocacy of groups like Children’s Cancer Cause. Thousands of kids are alive or living better lives because of everything you do.”
2022 RECIPIENT
Malcolm Smith, MD | Associate Branch Chief for Pediatric Oncology at the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP)
Dr. Malcolm Smith has been a member of CTEP since 1990, where he has focused on developing NCI’s preclinical and clinical research programs for children with cancer. He serves as the key liaison to the Children’s Oncology Group, the Pediatric Early Phase Clinical Trials Network (PEP-CTN), the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, and the NCI Pediatric Preclinical in Vivo Testing (PIVOT) Program.
“Malcolm has been responsible for building the national architecture of programs for childhood cancer research at NCI over the past 25 years, and he’s done it with crystal clear thought leadership and analysis,” said Children’s Cancer Cause founder Susan L. Weiner, PhD. “Malcolm has been my mentor and guide since 1997, teaching me invaluable lessons about childhood cancer drug development and critical challenges to progress in research. Early on, he recognized advocates’ need for better understanding about childhood cancer research and advised us as we launched our first decade of programs and workshops. Malcolm always puts the needs of children with cancer first.” Learn more →
2021 RECIPIENT
Representative Jackie Speier (CA-14)
Congresswoman Speier serves as co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Childhood Cancer Caucus, a group of House members instrumental in the passage of several significant pieces of childhood cancer legislation in recent years, including the Childhood Cancer STAR Act, the RACE for Children Act, and the Creating Hope Reauthorization Act. Rep. Speier has served in Congress since 2008, representing California’s 14th Congressional District.
“I’m elated and humbled to have been selected by Children’s Cancer Cause as this year’s recipient of the Leonard M. Rosen Memorial Research Award,” said the Congresswoman in her acceptance remarks. “Just over a decade ago, pediatric cancer patients did not have a voice in Washington. Today, not only do they have a voice, they are a force to be reckoned with.”
In the Congresswoman’s honor, Children’s Cancer Cause is designating the $10,000 award funds to the Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation in recognition of their excellence in the field of brain tumor survivorship.
2020 RECIPIENT
Gilles Vassal, MD, PhD | Founder and Chairman of ACCELERATE
As the foremost pediatric oncologist in Europe, Dr. Vassal has held multiple leadership positions in pediatric oncology professional societies and is currently Professor of Pediatric Oncology at Gustave Roussy, a comprehensive cancer center in France. He is also the chairman of ACCELERATE, a unique global platform, working to advance innovation in cancer drug development for children and adolescents.
“ACCELERATE is a multi-stakeholder international initiative with a very simple objective: work together to accelerate innovation for children and adolescents with cancer. We work together with clinicians and researchers, with industry, with regulatory networks and with patients, parents, and survivors,” said Dr. Vassal in his acceptance of the Rosen Research Award. “We succeeded in demonstrating that it is feasible, it is valuable, and it can really move the needle by finding solutions to identified issues.”
Dr. Vassal has authored over 250 publications and is currently president of Innovative Therapies for Children with Cancer (ITCC), a European Union academic consortium.
2019 RECIPIENT
David Poplack, MD | Director, Global HOPE
Dr. Poplack is a pioneer in the field of childhood cancer and one of our community’s premier thought leaders as author of more than 365 original articles and book chapters. He served as Director of Texas Children’s Cancer Center for 25 years, where he grew that institution into one of the nation’s top pediatric cancer centers and mentored scores of pediatric oncologists who are now caring for children around the globe.
To survivors and their families, Dr. Poplack is best known as the developer of Passport for Care, an individualized online tool that helps survivors manage their long-term care.
Dr. Poplack now serves as Director of Global HOPE, a program focused on building Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Centers of Excellence in 7 sub-Saharan African countries.
2018 RECIPIENT
Julia Rowland, PhD | Senior Strategic Advisor, Smith Center for Healing the Arts
Dr. Rowland was formerly the Director of the Office of Cancer Survivorship at the National Cancer Institute, and she is widely recognized as a national and international scholar, researcher and leader in the psychosocial aspects of cancer care broadly and cancer survivorship specifically.
In the 1970s, Dr. Rowland was on the front-lines of early survivorship research in the 1970s at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. In her Rosen Award acceptance speech, she described this time of early survivorship research: “This was incredibly exciting science. The focus was shifting away from how long we could help these children live to look at quality of life and function being as important as length of life. To me, that was the start of cancer survivorship — a movement that caught me and I’ve been hooked ever since.”
Dr. Rowland’s work in the survivorship space continues to this day:
“Currently, I’m in the process of creating a way for treatment centers across the country to do a self-assessment to evaluate their capacity - staff, systems, resource, commitment needed - to provide the [recommended Standards for the Psychosocial Care of Children with Cancer and their Families.]”
As a recipient of the Leonard M. Rosen Memorial Research Award, Dr. Rowland receives $10,000 in recognition and support of her work. In accepting this award, she described how these funds will help support her current endeavors: “I’m hoping to use the Rosen Award funds to conduct demonstration projects at a handful of sites that will examine how this tool can be used to enhance the capacity to deliver high quality care, the ultimate goal being to improve the psycosocial care available and delivered to childhood cancer survivors and their families.”
2017 RECIPIENT
Aaron Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH | PORTAL Director, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Dr. Kesselheim is Director of the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law (PORTAL) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kesselheim was selected for the second annual presentation of this award in recognition of his critical research advancing treatments and access for children battling cancer. His work in the legal and regulatory fields of drug development and approval, as well as insurance coverage and reimbursement practices, informs and supports the policy efforts of Children’s Cause and childhood cancer advocates. Dr. Kesselheim is also a faculty member in the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics and an Irving S. Ribicoff Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Yale Law School.
“Prescription drugs can be life-changing treatments for children with cancer, and so we need to make sure that there is adequate support for their discovery and development, that they are rigorously tested in the appropriate populations, and that they are accessible to the patients who need them,” Kesselheim stated in acceptance of this Award. “My research in pharmaceutical policy—done in close collaboration with my colleagues at PORTAL and the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology—touches on all of these subjects, and it’s an honor to be recognized by a group like Children’s Cause that is dedicated to supporting these goals.”
2016 RECIPIENT
Mary McCabe, RN, MA | Director of Cancer Survivorship Initiative, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Mary McCabe is widely recognized as a leader in cancer survivorship with the development of comprehensive programs for cancer survivors, which includes follow-up care, research, and education and training. An oncology nurse, she previously served as Director of Education and Special Initiatives at the National Cancer Institute and chairs Memorial Sloan Kettering's Ethics Committee.
In acknowledgment of the Award, Ms. McCabe initiated a guest lectureship at MSK focused on the ethics issues related to the development of new therapies for children including the issue of informed consent and specimen banks, novel clinical trial design, and how best to include children in the hoped-for benefits in targeted therapies.
"The CCCA Board is particularly gratified to present Mary with this, the first annual Rosen Award, in recognition of her long-standing contributions, passion and dedication to the needs of pediatric cancer patients, families and survivors," said Susan L. Weiner, PhD, Founder of Children's Cause.