Introducing the Oncology Data Advisor® Fellows Forum: A Valuable Resource for Hematology/Oncology Fellows With Samuel Kareff, MD, MPH

Oncology Data Advisor: Welcome to Oncology Data Advisor, I'm Keira Smith. We are very excited to announce the launch of our new Fellows Forum, a comprehensive resource for Hematology/Oncology Fellows. Joining me today to announce the launch is Dr. Samuel Kareff, Chief Hematology/Oncology Fellow at the University of Miami, Sylvester Cancer Center.

Dr. Kareff, thanks so much for coming on today. To start off, would you like to introduce yourself and share a little bit about your work and your research?

Samuel Kareff, MD, MPH: Thanks Keira, so much, for having me today. I'm very excited to launch the Fellows Forum alongside you. My name's Sam Kareff. I'm one of the Hematology/Medical Oncology Fellows at the University of Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, and I'm thrilled to be here.

Oncology Data Advisor: Congratulations again on a new role as Chief Heme/Onc Fellow. What are your responsibilities in this role?

Dr. Kareff: Thanks so much, Keira. It's an exciting role. As part of my fellowship, we have two Co-Chief Fellows, one of whom is responsible for education initiatives, and one of whom is responsible for administrative responsibilities like scheduling and those sorts of things. I'll be in the first role with education initiatives.

What I'm really hoping to do is be able to schedule very informative and interactive didactic sessions for the benefit of our fellowship, as well as for other trainees affiliated with our center. These include internal medicine residents, medical students, as well as visiting doctors from other countries. This will take up the majority of my time.

But in addition, I'm also looking outside our center for opportunities in medical education. Opportunities like this Fellows Forum, which will hopefully be just as interactive and informative, could be potential options, as well as other allied continuing medical education (CME) activities which are freely available in both hematology and medical oncology.

Oncology Data Advisor: That's awesome. So, we're really excited to be launching this new Fellows Forum. How do you think the Forum will serve as a valuable resource for our Heme/Onc Fellow audience?

Dr. Kareff: I think this is going to be a really wonderful resource that will serve in addition to other similar resources that are available for fellows. When we were planning this alongside the rest of the group, we were hoping that we could really dive into topics that were fellow-specific but also generalizable to the fields of hematology and medical oncology.

So, related to topics for fellows' benefit, we might talk about things like applying to hematology/oncology fellowship, the pros and cons of the subspecialty of internal medicine versus others, and things of this nature, to really make sure that trainees who haven't yet embarked on this career are 100% certain that this is the right career path for them.

Also, what we could do is look at where these fields exist in the cancer ecosystem. We're lucky in that cancer is looked at as a special field of medicine because of the severe and important effects it has on society at large. We exist alongside groups like patient advocates, researchers, policymakers and legislators, and other interest groups. It's important that we make a good mark on our field, but also on society at large, like I mentioned.

Oncology Data Advisor: What are some of the educational topics that you're looking forward to covering in the Fellows Forum?

Dr. Kareff: I think, in addition to those that I mentioned about fellowship in general, what I'm really looking forward to is talking about research advances. There are emerging therapies in the field of hematology, like bispecific antibodies, and there are other equally exciting advances in the solid tumor fields, like chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapies. These would be topics I'd really love to see renowned researchers come and discuss—how they could be applicable to those in fellowship and beyond.

In addition, I think it would be great to do introductory, basic reviews of common malignancies. So, in the solid tumor world, the common things like lung, breast, prostate, and gastrointestinal (GI) cancers, and in the liquid tumor world, we'll be talking about leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, and these sorts of things.

Oncology Data Advisor: Awesome. I'm really excited to cover all these important topics too, and I'm looking forward to working with you on it.

Dr. Kareff: Likewise, Keira. Thanks again for the invitation. I look forward to seeing where this goes.

About Dr. Kareff

Samuel Kareff, MD, MPH, is a Medical Oncologist and the Chief Hematology-Oncology Fellow at the University of Miami's Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida. He has special research interests in health advocacy, public policy, medical education, and the development of cancer therapies.

Transcript edited for clarity. Any views expressed above are the speaker's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Oncology Data Advisor.