Title:Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Prevention

Providing cancer treatment navigation, access, and education to underserved communities

• Enhances health education and awareness 
• Cancer LAW collaboration provides legal support for cancer patients
• Deepens partnerships and engagement with community and Georgetown

The Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Prevention at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center opened in April 2023. The Center opened after a commitment from the Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation—a commitment that includes support for four other cancer care and prevention centers. 

The Center was created to reach patients who have been historically underserved in the Washington, DC, area, and is located in Ward 8, an area in Southeast DC which has a higher rate of cancer incidents and deaths than the city average. The Center has touched hundreds of lives by delivering cancer education, legal services, patient navigation, and opportunities to participate in clinical trials.

Engaging the community

Located in Southeast DC, the Ralph Lauren Center expands on services previously offered by its predecessor, Georgetown Lombardi’s Capital Breast Care Center, and now includes resources for breast, lung, colorectal, and prostate cancers, and services to navigate screening and follow up care at MedStar Health hospitals. The foundation’s support of Georgetown Lombardi dates back more than 40 years, starting with the co-founding of the Nina Hyde Center for Breast Cancer Research at Georgetown Lombardi. 

Since its launch, the Ralph Lauren Center has developed community partnerships for engagement and education, conducted research, advocated for patients, and provided transportation to appointments.  

Lucile Adams-Campbell, Ph.D., founding director of the Center, noted that a guiding principle of its work is to meet people where they are in the community—at churches and other faith-based organizations, federally qualified health centers, local community clinics, homeless shelters, and grocery stores.

“This kind of engagement reflects the interest our community members have in being proactive advocates for their own health,” said Adams-Campbell.

Collaborations with host locations have increased community access to health education with outreach, health fairs, and a pastoral initiative to host events in local churches. 

“Churches have different calendars of events within the year, and we coordinate our activities around those events,” said pastoral initiative coordinator Mirielle Bright, Ph.D., MPH. “We’ve also done virtual events where we present nutrition and cancer-related topics and offer prostate health education where we’ve invited a physician for a question and answer segment.”

Resolving health-harming legal issues

The gift also enhances support for the Cancer Legal Assistance and Well-being (C-LAW) project, part of Georgetown’s Health Justice Alliance (a collaboration between Georgetown Law and Georgetown University Medical Center). Working with MedStar Health, the C-LAW project provides legal services to patients in the areas of employment, housing, advance planning, debt, and health insurance, and trains health care teams to identify and refer patients with potential legal needs.

C-LAW worked with a patient’s landlord to repair and remediate an ongoing mold issue caused by leaking windows that was impacting the patient’s health. The team also won a patient’s appeal for disability benefits after Social Security failed to obtain the patient’s full medical history. C-LAW is one example of the ways the Ralph Lauren Center connects patients to resources in other fields that help address issues that affect patients’ health.  

Since opening, the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Prevention has grown its team and deepened its connection to Georgetown with community outreach and engagement internships for undergraduate and graduate students.

“We created the internship program as a response to the overwhelming interest in community outreach and engagement among students across the training spectrum from Georgetown and beyond,” said Chiranjeev Dash, MBBS, Ph.D., MPH, assistant director of health disparities research and an associate professor of oncology in the Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities Research. “It also gives us an opportunity to introduce a diverse cadre of rising cancer researchers and physicians to the importance of community partnerships in the work that we do at the Center.”

At its core, the Ralph Lauren Center stands as a powerful reminder that current use philanthropy sustains progress and creates immediate, life-changing impact in the fight against health disparities.