Harold P. Freeman, MD
President & Founder, The Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care & Prevention
Founder, The Harold P. Freeman Patient Navigation Institute

Dr. Freeman is the President and Founder of The Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention in New York City and Founder of The Harold P. Freeman Patient Navigation Institute. He is also the Senior Advisor to the Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Director of the NCI Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities. Dr. Freeman is a past National President of the American Cancer Society. He served for 11 years as Chairman of the U.S. President’s Cancer Panel. Dr. Freeman pioneered the Patient Navigation Program.

Dr. Freeman is a Diplomat of the American Board of Surgery and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Freeman served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors of the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Freeman served on the Executive Council of the Society of Surgical Oncology. He has been Medical Director of the Breast Examination Center of Harlem, a program of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, since 1979.

Dr. Freeman is past Chairman of the United States President’s Cancer Panel. He has been appointed to this position for four three-year terms, first by President Bush in 1991 and subsequently by President Clinton in 1994, 1997 and 2000.

Dr. Freeman is the chief architect of the American Cancer Society’s initiative on cancer in the poor and is a leading authority on the interrelationships between race, poverty and cancer. Related to this, the "Harold P. Freeman Award" was established by the American Cancer Society in 1990. This award may be given annually in ACS divisions throughout America to individuals who have made outstanding contributions in the fight against cancer in the poor. Dr. Freeman served as National President of the American Cancer Society from 1988-1989.

Dr. Freeman was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1997.

Katharyn A. May, DNSc, RN, FAAN
Dean and Professor
UW-Madison School of Nursing

Before joining the University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty in 2001, Dean May served as professor and director of the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and as president of the Canadian Association of University Schools of Nursing-a group that steers the country's 58 colleges and schools of nursing. Earlier, she held faculty and administrative posts at the University of California-San Francisco and Vanderbilt University.

May says the most pressing concern driving her profession is a worldwide shortage of nurses, a situation expected to worsen in coming years. At the same time, the profession is changing and becoming more complex, putting more responsibility on schools of nursing.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, May is advancing plans for a new Nursing Science Center building. The School of Nursing has nationally recognized programs in pain management, patient health-seeking behaviors, and the application of information technology in health care.

Dean May is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. She earned her bachelors degree in nursing and psychology from Duke University, and the masters and doctoral degrees in nursing science from the University of California-San Francisco. Her research expertise is in the social psychological experience of pregnancy with emphasis on new fatherhood and the impacts of high-risk pregnancy on families.

Bradford W. Hesse, PhD
Chief, National Cancer Institute's Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch

Bradford (Brad) Hesse was appointed Chief of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI's) Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch (HCIRB) in November, 2006. He served as the Acting Chief of HCIRB from 2004-2006.

Dr. Hesse's professional focus is bringing the power of health information technologies to bear on the problem of eliminating death and suffering from cancer, a cause to which he remains steadfastly dedicated. While at the NCI, he has championed several initiatives that evaluate and progress the science of cancer communication and informatics, two of which include the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) and the Centers of Excellence in Cancer Communication (CECCR).

As director of NCI's biennial Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS), Dr. Hesse is responsible for leading a team of scientists in the development and execution of this nationally representative, general population survey of American adults. HINTS, now entering its third iteration, systematically evaluates the public's knowledge, attitudes and behaviors relevant to cancer control in an environment of rapidly changing communication technologies.

Dr. Hesse also serves as the program director for NCI's Centers of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research (CECCR). This initiative supports the research of four centers aimed at increasing the knowledge of, tools for, access to, and use of cancer communications by the public, patients, survivors, and health professionals. The centers have been instrumental in defining the next generation of interdisciplinary collaboration in cancer communication science.

Prior to his work at the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Hesse conducted research in the interdisciplinary fields of human computer interaction, health communication, medical informatics, and computer-supported decision making. In 1988, he served as a postdoctoral member of the Committee for Social Science Research on Computing at Carnegie Mellon University, and subsequently co-founded the Center for Research on Technology at the American Institutes for Research in Palo Alto, California in 1991. Working in a contract environment before coming to NCI, Dr. Hesse directed projects for the Departments of Education and Labor, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health. He has also provided usability services to Apple Computer, Hewlett Packard, Xerox, Microsoft, Sun, and Netscape.

Dr. Hesse currently serves on the board of advisors for the American Psychological Association's online resource, PsycINFO, and is a member of the American Psychological Society, the Association for Computing Machineries, Special Interest Group on Human Computer Interaction (SIG-CHI), the American Medical Informatics Association, the International Communication Association, and the Usability Professionals Association.