Margaret Hitchcock, PhD is a founding board member of the California Colorectal Cancer Coalition (C4) and currently serves as President. She chairs and administers the C4 Community Grants program for improving colorectal cancer screening and care in California, primarily through funding Federally Qualified Health Centers to promote systems improvements. Her research interests aim to optimize the patient-physician interaction to improve screening rates, assure access to the complete care continuum for colorectal cancer, and to improve data collection at all phases of screening and treatment through a patient-centered approach. She is an ongoing member of the California Dialogue on Cancer (CDOC) Executive Committee and co-chairs the colorectal cancer working group. One of Dr. Hitchcock’s recent publications highlights the need for adding a colorectal cancer screening quality measure to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services Medicaid Adult Core Set of Quality Measures, which was successfully adopted in January 2022 after C4 orchestrated a national campaign to make this happen.
Dr. Hitchcock is also a three-time cancer survivor, carries a genetic mutation putting her at high risk for many other types of cancer, including those located in the GI tract, and would prefer to spend the next 60 years of her life without additional cancer challenges. She is a strong advocate for prevention and early detection efforts towards all cancers.
Conflict of Interest Statement: Dr. Hitchcock is currently paid as an external subcontractor to C4 for her work with the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) for co-managing (providing technical and scientific expertise) the Breast and Colorectal Cancer Screening Implementation Project (BCCSIP), a tri-organizational pilot project funded by CDC to the DHCS Every Woman Counts program that also includes the CA Department of Public Health (CDPH) Comprehensive Cancer Control Program/CA Dialogue on Cancer.