WASHINGTON PARK — The South Side needs more access to quality cancer treatment as much as it needs a new trauma center, University of Chicago Medicine officials said during community forum Thursday night at the KLEO Community Family Life Center, 119 E. Garfield Blvd.
The forum gave residents a chance to learn more about U. of C.'s plan to build a trauma center and cancer/specialty care hospital, which will go before the Illinois Department of Public Health at a May 10 hearing.
"The support of our community is really important to the state as they look at this plan," said Cristal Thomas, vice president of community health engagement at U. of C. "We're very excited that while there has been an overwhelming positive response to this plan … we will continue to seek and get input from our community."
Torrey L. Barrett Jr., executive director at KLEO, said the KLEO center was happy to host the forum.
"We've been asking for a trauma center on the South Side for a very long time. We have to make sure it passes in Springfield,” he said. “We know that if there's a divided community, people play off that. We all want to make sure the trauma center comes."
The $269 million plan, called Get CARE, includes a new and expanded emergency department, a dedicated cancer hospital and more specialty care, and level 1 adult trauma service.
In December, U. of C. announced that it would open a trauma center on its Hyde Park campus instead of at Holy Cross Hospital, and in February released its plans. The new emergency department would cut wait times and ambulance travel times for patients seeking emergency care in some of the most violence-plagued South Side neighborhoods.
Trauma care is expected to cost the medical center $20 million a year, which will be offset partially by treating more cancer patients through a proposed cancer and specialty care facility to be housed within Mitchell Hospital. The hospital would be converted, over a four- to five-year construction process, into a modern facility that increases access to such specialty care services as cardiology, cardiac surgery and orthopedic medicine, with more advanced technology for critically ill patients.
Forum facilitator Salim Al Nurridin, CEO of the Healthcare Consortium of Illinois, said offsetting the costs of the trauma center with the cancer hospital is a "no-brainer."
"This issue of cancer coming from the community preceded this trauma center," he said. "And this university has already invested in the best cancer practices in the country."
Dr. Olufunmilayo Olapade, director of the U. of C. Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics, moved to Hyde Park in 1988 to specialize in cancer treatment. She said studies show that cancer treatment on the South Side is as prevalent a need as a trauma center.
"When I came to the South Side, I really saw the need in our neighborhoods," she said. "People say there's so much trauma on the South Side of Chicago. Yes, there's a lot of trauma here, but there's also a lot of cancer."
Olapade added that black women in Chicago are more than twice as likely to die from breast cancer as white women in Chicago, and that studies show there's also a direct tie between lung cancer and disparities in income.
Should the plan reach final approval, construction of the trauma center could begin as early as this summer with an estimated completion of late next year.
Those interested in attending the May 10 hearing can RSVP at UChicagoGetCare.org.
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