National Navigation Roundtable Harold P. Freeman, M.D. is president and CEO of the Harold P.Freeman Patient Navigation Institute in New York City. He is Professor of Surgery Emeritus, Columbia University and previously served as Director of Surgery at Harlem Hospital and Professor of Clinical Surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Freeman is a diplomat of the American Board of Surgery and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Freeman is founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention and founder and Medical Director of the Breast Examination Center of Harlem, a program of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He was the first director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities and served as Associate Director of the NCI for a five-year period ending in 2005. He served as national president of the American Cancer Society in 1988-89 and he was the chief architect of the American Cancer Society’s initiative on Cancer in the Poor.

The American Cancer Society established the Dz Harold P. Freeman Award dz in 1990 to recognize his work in this area. Dr. Freeman pioneered the patient navigation concept and model which addresses disparities in access to timely diagnosis and treatment, particularly among poor and uninsured people. Based on this model the Patient Navigator and Chronic Disease Prevention Act was signed into law by President Bush in 2005. Dr. Freeman was appointed by Presidents George Bush and Clinton to serve as Chairman of the United States President’s Cancer Panel for an 11-year period.

He is a Lasker Laure ate, and received the Lasker Award for Public Service in 2000 for Dz enlightening scientists and the public about the relation-ship between race, poverty and cancer”. In 2015, Dr. Freeman was named a “Giant of Cancer Care” by OncLive.