Dr. Tiffany Avery of NantHealth: 5 Things We Must Do To Improve the US Healthcare System

Ensuring that everyone has access to healthcare is essential. Access should be coupled with an emphasis on screening and prevention efforts, as well. For example, patients without healthcare access are diagnosed with cancers at later stages, which leads to worse outcomes. Being able to catch those cancers earlier with appropriate screening would directly impact survival. Being able to prevent some cancers altogether on a large scale, using the HPV vaccine, for example, would be even better.

As a part of my interview series with leaders in healthcare, I had the pleasure to interview Dr. Tiffany Avery.

Dr. Tiffany Avery is Medical Director of Oncology at NantHealth. Prior to her role at NantHealth, she served as an Assistant Professor of Oncology at Thomas Jefferson University and Wake Forest Baptist Health. She earned her BS and MPH in Epidemiology from Tulane University, and MD from LSU Health Sciences Center-New Orleans. In her academic roles, she was involved in clinical trials for breast cancer patients and research investigating survival disparities in cancer. She has recently also earned certification in Lifestyle Medicine, and remains involved in work aimed at reducing survival disparities in cancer.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I never thought I would be an oncologist, to be honest. Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of personal experience with cancer in my family. Once I had the opportunity to experience the other side of cancer care — not from a family perspective — but from the physician’s role, I loved it. I enjoyed the science behind it, and I also found that the practice of oncology demands attention to the physician-patient relationship and to the patient’s support systems, as well as consideration of the whole person in treatment. Those aspects indeed drew me in. I also have a…