Medicine Grand Rounds – Dr. Patricia Rivera and Dr. Jason Long Presenting “Lung Cancer Screening Beyond NLST: Progress, Challenges and Opportunities.”

Dr. Rivera is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary Diseases and Critical Care Medicine at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. She joined the faculty at UNC in 1995 and co-founded the first Multidisciplinary Thoracic Oncology Program in the country, a premier program that became the model for multidisciplinary care and defined the vital role pulmonologists play in the care of patients with thoracic malignancies. More recently, she founded the Multidisciplinary Lung Cancer Screening Program at UNC and continues to direct both programs. Her expertise includes screening, diagnosis and staging of lung cancer and management of treatment complications.

Dr. Rivera holds several vital leadership roles at UNC and for more than 20 years has served national pulmonary and cancer societies including the American Thoracic Society (ATS, The American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) and the American Cancer Society National Lung Cancer Round Table through numerous leadership roles and by sharing her time, knowledge and passion to advance the field of Thoracic Oncology

Dr. Rivera collaborates with colleagues at UNC on NIH/NCI funded research and has co-developed and serves as Co-Investigator of the North Carolina (NC) Lung Screening Registry, a statewide initiative to examine the delivery, quality and outcomes of lung cancer screening and evaluate the extent to which disparities in lung cancer screening outcomes exist. Her ongoing funded research activities also include a multi-institution pilot project exploring presence of coronary artery calcification on lung cancer screening CT and downstream risk stratification and statin delivery and exploring rural/urban disparities associated with biomarker testing in advanced lung cancer.

Dr. Rivera is passionate and committed to medical education and mentoring and has received numerous awards at UNC and from National Societies. She is particularly passionate about developing the next generation of leaders and increasing the representation of women and underrepresented minorities in our field.

Dr. Long is an Associate Professor of Surgery in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. Dr. Long attended UNC-Chapel Hill for Undergraduate and Wake Forest University for Medical School. He completed his General Surgery Residency at the University of Chicago and completed his Cardiothoracic Surgery Fellowship at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Dr. Long is an American Board Certified Thoracic Surgeon and Return to UNC in 2013. He has been the Co-Director of the UNC Lung Cancer Screening Clinic since 2015, will become the director in April 2022. Dr. Long’s clinical interest are in Thoracic oncology including cancer of lung, esophagus; lung transplantation; minimally invasive thoracic surgery including robotic surgery; extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO); lung and esophageal surgery. Robotic thoracic surgery, esophagectomy, lung cancer surgery, lung transplantation, chest wall resection and reconstruction, thoracic trauma.