Today: NIH Director Francis Collins to Join Vaccine Hesitancy Panel at AACR Annual Meeting 2021

PHILADELPHIA – The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will host a forum titled “Building Vaccine Confidence: Best Practices to Combat Misinformation and Vaccine Hesitancy in COVID-19 Vaccines” today, April 14, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. ET. This session is taking place during Week 1 of the AACR Annual Meeting 2021.  

Participants in this timely and essential forum will include:

• Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, Director, National Institutes of Health
• Grace Cordovano, PhD, BCPA, CEO, Enlightening Results, LLC
• Lee Greenberger, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
• Mary Gullatte, PhD, RN, ANP-BC, AOCN, Corporate Director of Nursing Innovation and Research, Emory Healthcare Inc.
• Liz Hamel, Vice President and Director of Public Opinion and Survey Research, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
• Lisa C. Richardson, MD, MPH, Director, Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• E. John Wherry, PhD, Chair, Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics; Richard and Barbara Schiffrin President’s Distinguished Professor; and Director, Institute for Immunology, University of Pennsylvania

Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, FAACR, Immediate Past President of the AACR, and Gilbert S. Omenn, MD, PhD, Chair of the AACR’s Health Policy Subcommittee, will moderate the forum.

Participants will discuss the scientific evidence that demonstrates the safety and benefit of the COVID-19 vaccines, including how decades of basic research enabled the rapid development of these lifesaving vaccines; provide the latest information regarding the public’s views and willingness to get one of the COVID-19 vaccines; talk about the strategies that are being used to overcome misinformation and build trust in the vaccines; and address the concerns and answer the questions that patients with cancer have about the vaccines.

To attend the forum, journalists should request complimentary meeting registration from the AACR public relations team by using the form on the AACR website or contacting Kathleen Venango at [email protected].