Erlene Seymour, M.D., member of the Malignant Hematology Multidisciplinary Team at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and assistant professor in the Department of Oncology at Wayne State University School of Medicine (WSU SOM), has been selected as the winner of the 2018 Recent Alumni Award from the school of medicine.
She was nominated by Gerold Bepler, M.D., Ph.D., president and CEO of Karmanos. Dr. Seymour will receive the award during the Medical Alumni Reunion Dinner on Saturday, May 19, 2018, at MGM Grand in Detroit.
The Recent Alumni Award is presented to an individual who received a medical degree from WSU SOM within the last 15 years and has demonstrated outstanding professional achievement, community contributions or service to the school of medicine.
“Dr. Seymour is an exemplary clinician researcher,” Dr. Bepler wrote in his nomination letter. “Over her brief tenure, she has already authored 11 peer reviewed publications and book chapters, including a first author publication in Journal of Oncology Practice titled ‘Challenges in the Clinical Application of the American Society of Clinical Oncology Value Framework: A Medicare Cost-Benefit Analysis in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia’.
“Dr. Seymour epitomizes all the tenets of the Recent Alumni Award.”
Dr. Seymour has presented her research findings at annual meetings of the American Society of Hematology. She was recently awarded a pilot project through the American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant mechanism, enabling her to continue studying treatment patterns of care and financial toxicity (i.e. the unwanted side effects as a result of medical care costs, such as non-adherence to treatment and socioeconomic disparities in care, which has been shown to lead to poorer clinical outcomes) among patients with chronic leukemia.
Dr. Seymour graduated from WSU in 2008 with her medical degree. As a medical student, she was active in Code Blue, a group that sent medical students into Highland Park elementary schools to teach health classes and was an elected member of the Aesculapians Honor Society.
She collaborated with her now husband Joseph Seymour, an ear, nose and throat specialist at St. Joseph Mercy in Ann Arbor, as a co-coordinator for the 2008 Lampoons event, which benefitted the National Bone Marrow Program (NBMP) in memory of their classmate Uzoma Azuh. The event helped recruit more than 200 volunteers onto the bone marrow registry and generated more than $9,000 in fundraising for NBMP.