Community Collaborative Initiatives Committee Update

The Community Collaborative Initiatives (CCI) Committee was developed to increase the involvement and input of community neurosurgeons in the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS)/Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) Section on Tumors.  To facilitate achieving this CCI objective, the Academic Community Alliance (ACA) was established by Tony Asher, M.D. and approved by the Section to promote the initiation and expansion of combined community and academic efforts.  Specifically, the ACA was developed to increase the involvement of community neurosurgeons in scientific efforts, enhance dissemination of current important brain tumor-related literature, establish and/or increase communication between physicians in a variety of practice settings and create collaborative community-academic brain tumor efforts throughout the United States and internationally.

Rather than the traditional institutional patient care paradigm, the ACA is designed to be a network of academic and community practitioners committed to information exchange and patient care optimization.  ACA is in the process of creating/identifying an initial network of 20 to 40 individuals from centers around the country and internationally.  This network of collaborative sites will be formed between academic and community centers.  These initial ACA collaborative locations will serve as models for development of additional sites in the future.

To develop a national membership base, we have defined 5 regions (Figure) in the United States and assigned coordinators to each region.  The regions include; Northeast, Midwest, Southeast, South/Southwest and West.  Todd Vitaz, M.D. (t.vitaz@louisville.edu ) has agreed to be the national coordinator.  International membership development is being lead by Gail Rosseau, M.D. (grosseau@neurosource.com).  The key objectives for membership development include, identifying sites with ongoing academic-community efforts, identifying potential sites with potential for academic-community alliances and identifying/recruiting individuals to develop potential or existing sites for alliances within each region.  If you are interested in participating or have feedback/information related to membership in the ACA please contact Todd Vitaz (within the United States and Puerto Rico) or Gail Rosseau (international).

Jonas Sheehan, M.D., Ganesh Rao, M.D. and Robert Carter, M.D., are leading website development for the ACA.  ACA web-based communication will be through the Section on Tumors website.  We anticipate that the ACA website should be up and running later this Fall.  Ultimately, content for ACA site will include a listing of neuro-oncology clinical trials, pertinent ACA-related information and “Expert and Select Reviews in Neuro-oncology”.  The website will provide easy and rapid assess to timely periodic reviews of neuro-oncology topics by specific experts, as well as selected reviews of important current neuro-oncology papers by authorities in each specific field of neuro-oncology.  Overall, the ACA-site will provide practitioners the opportunity to easily disseminate and receive critical neuro-oncology related clinical and scientific information. 

By working together and taking advantage of the variety of skills and resources brought by community and academic surgeons, we believe that new and improved treatment paradigms will be developed for neuro-oncology patients.  We are enthusiastic about the continuing development and growth of the ACA and encourage your feedback and participation (asher@cnsa.com or lonserr@ninds.nih.gov).  The AANS/CNS Section on Tumors CCI Committee remains committed to serving the needs of neurosurgeon oncologist in all practice settings.