Paul F. Engstrom, MD, an emeritus member of AACR who was a pioneer in cancer prevention and control as an oncologist at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, died December 26, 2025, at the age of 89.
Born in Minnesota in 1936, Engstrom graduated from St. Olaf College in 1968 and received his medical degree from the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1972. After internship at the University of Minnesota Hospital in 1963, he completed a residency in internal medicine at the same hospital in 1967. He was then drafted into the U.S. Army and became chief of hematology and oncology at Tripler Army Hospital in Honolulu, serving to the rank of major.
He joined the American Oncologic Hospital in Philadelphia in 1970, which merged in 1974 with the Institute for Cancer Research to become Fox Chase Cancer Center. Interested in cancer prevention, he focused on screening and smoking cessation and created a cancer prevention and control program at Fox Chase, one of the first in the nation at a comprehensive cancer center. He held the Samuel M.V. Hamilton Chair in Cancer Prevention.
As a physician, he specialized in treating patients with gastrointestinal cancers and neuroendocrine tumors. He retired in 2018 but continued to serve as professor emeritus of hematology/oncology and special advisor to the president of Fox Chase.
He served as a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network board of directors and was chair of the NCCN Guidelines Panel for Colon, Rectal, and Anal Cancers.
A member of the AACR since 1982, Engstrom served as a senior editor of Cancer Prevention Research from2008 to 2018. In 2020, the journal honored him with a special section highlighting the various prevention-related fields in which he worked. He was a fellow of the American College of Physicians and received the Annual Clinical Care Achievement Award from the Association of Community Cancer Centers in 2013
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