Penn Medicine Princeton’s Geriatric Oncology Program Honored with 2025 ACCC Innovator Award

The Geriatric Oncology Program at the Penn Medicine Princeton Cancer Center has been awarded a 2025 Innovator Award by the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC), recognizing it as one of the nation’s most impactful models for advancing equity, quality, and value in cancer care.

Established in 2023 with support from the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation, the program reimagines cancer care for older adults through a whole-person, population health approach. At its core is a commitment to understanding each patient’s health status, functional needs, goals, values, and preferences—then using that insight to guide personalized, coordinated treatment planning.

Rather than focusing solely on geriatric assessment, the program weaves together proactive symptom screening, structured conversations around goals of care, timely advance care planning, and tailored supportive care referrals. Unique features include dedicated geriatric nurse navigation, specialized social work support, and weekly multidisciplinary team reviews to ensure that interventions align with what matters most to patients.

A foundational element of the program is its use of health information technology to scale this care model across the population. Working in close collaboration with PC3I Program Director Peter Gabriel, MD, MSE, the team developed automated EPIC workflows that embed the ASCO-endorsed Practical Geriatric Assessment (PGA), capture patient goals and priorities, and flag unmet needs in real time. These tools enable the care team to address geriatric vulnerabilities, support patients during systemic therapy, and ensure timely coordination of services like physical therapy, nutrition, social work, palliative care, and hospice.

In the program’s first year, 201 patients were assessed. Among them, 75% had functional impairments, 53% were at nutritional risk, and 35% lacked adequate social support. The program generated over 600 tailored referrals and saw substantial improvements in advance directive documentation, hospice length of stay, and alignment of care with patient values.

“What makes this work unique is how seamlessly it fits into routine care,” said Dr. Ramy Sedhom, the program’s founding director. “We didn’t create a standalone service—we built a framework that touches every older adult with cancer, delivering personalized, values-driven care as a default.”

The program’s operational success is due in large part to the leadership of Julianne Ani, Geriatric Oncology Program Manager, who helped operationalize the infrastructure and coordinate the navigation, nursing, and psychosocial components that made whole-person care possible.

The program will be recognized alongside other national awardees at the 2025 ACCC National Oncology Conference in October in Denver, Colorado.

To learn more, read the ACCC’s blog post.