November 23, 2020
The Health Care Improvement Foundation’s (HCIF) Partner Profiles highlight the efforts of valued and innovative health leaders. Our partners’ work supports HCIF’s vision for a responsive, coordinated health care community that fulfills the needs of patients and consumers to achieve better health.
In recognition of Men’s Health Month, we celebrate the work of Dr. Adam Reese, Chief of Urologic Oncology at Temple University Lewis Katz School of Medicine. Dr. Reese actively engages with PURC as the physician champion for Temple University and as the chair of the PURC Active Surveillance working group. His active involvement in pioneering PURC initiatives such as the development of the PURCASE tool that standardizes active surveillance initiation across practices and providers has greatly contributed to PURC’s successes.
What led you to urology? What interests you most about urology?
In medical school, I had the opportunity to work with several urologists who had a significant impact on my career decision. They seemed to truly enjoy their work, much more so than many physicians in other fields did. The more time I spent with them, the more I realized urology was the right field for me.
My primary focus in urology is caring for patients with urologic malignancies. We are learning that many malignancies can be managed in a conservative fashion with surveillance, allowing patients to avoid the potential morbidities caused by surgery and other aggressive treatment approaches. I am very interested in risk stratification of urologic malignancies, which helps us to differentiate low risk patients who can be managed with surveillance from higher risk patients in whom more aggressive treatments are necessary.
What is one thing you think people should know about providing prostate cancer care?
Management of prostate cancer is certainly not “one size fits all.” There are so many factors to consider when choosing the best treatment options for patients, including disease severity, likelihood of cancer control, a patient’s overall health, and the effects of any treatments on a patient’s lifestyle. For this reason, it is critical for the doctor to work in conjunction with the patient to select the best available treatment for reach individual patients.
What are your greatest accomplishments within your field so far?
I am most proud of being named the program director for our Urology Department at the Temple University Lewis Katz School of Medicine. The education of future urologists is one of the most important responsibilities of an academic medical center, and I am proud to have been entrusted with this responsibility at Temple.
If you could motivate people in your field to tackle one issue or address one challenge, what would it be?
I would encourage people to avoid the overtreatment of clinically indolent, low risk prostate cancer. Active surveillance is an excellent management strategy for these patients, but it is still under-utilized in my opinion.
What have you found most valuable about working with HCIF? What is something you’ve learned from our partnership?
I have found the ability to collaborate with my colleagues across the region as the most valuable aspect of working with PURC. Without organizations such as PURC, it is easy to become isolated at your own institution. Collaborative such as PURC open our eyes to different ideas and opinions from physicians at other centers that I would not have otherwise encountered.
Dr. Reese is a firm believer that a physician should treat their patients as they would like to be treated. Beyond hospital walls, he is an avid watcher of professional sports, specifically the English Premier soccer league and NFL. He also enjoys spending time with his kids, and hopes to travel with them to Australia someday.