University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Comprehensive Cancer Center director Edward Partridge, M.D., a renowned women’s cancer doctor and leader in the fight to reduce race- and ethnicity-based cancer disparities, has been named president-elect of the American Cancer Society (ACS) national board of directors.

The immediate past ACS first vice president, Partridge is scheduled to become president of the 2010-11 national board of directors in November 2010. The ACS is the nation’s largest volunteer health organization.

Partridge, a Demopolis native, is chair of the cervical cancer-screening guidelines panel for the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. He also is the principal investigator of the Deep South Network for Cancer Control, a National Cancer Institute-funded project focused on training, data-gathering and educational outreach in 22 counties of the Alabama Black Belt, the Mississippi Delta, urban Birmingham and Hattiesburg, Miss., and Laurel, Miss.

Partridge’s disparity research helped secure Alabama participation in the Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, which enables women diagnosed with an abnormal mammogram to receive treatment regardless of financial means.

Partridge has chaired the Mid-South Division of the American Cancer Society and the Commission on Cancer for the American College of Surgeons. He is also a past president of the Jefferson County Medical Society, Alabama

Society of Clinical Oncology and Alabama Chapter of the American College of Surgeons. Partridge won the Birmingham Business Journal’s 2009 Health Care Heroes physician provider award.

A graduate of the UAB School of Medicine, Partridge completed his residency in obstetrics and gynecology at UAB. He became an instructor in 1976 and later became director of the UAB Division of Gynecologic Oncology. Partridge was named to the Margaret Cameron Spain Chair in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1999 and became the Comprehensive Cancer Center director in 2007.

The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center is among the 41 cancer centers in the nation to meet the stringent criteria for the National Cancer Institute’s comprehensive designation. The center is a leader in groundbreaking research, reducing cancer disparities and leading-edge patient care.

Community support and volunteers are vital to the Cancer Center’s mission.