OUR LEADERSHIP TEAM
Dr. Dingle Spence is the Director of the Jamaica Cancer Care & Research Institute (JACCRI). Dr. Spence is a Jamaican physician with training in both Clinical Oncology and Palliative Medicine. She is the Senior Medical Officer of the Hope Institute Hospital, Jamaica’s only dedicated Oncology and Palliative Care unit. She also serves as a Board Member of the International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care (IAHPC), President-Elect of the Caribbean Palliative Care Association (CARIPALCA), and as Associate Lecturer at the University of the West Indies and the Cicely Saunders Institute, King's College London. Dr. Spence has a special interest in providing access to palliative care education for providers in small island nations and other countries in the Caribbean region.
Dingle Spence, B.Sc., MBBS,
Dip. Pall. Med, FRCR
Dr. Alexandra Shields, JACCRI's Director of Research, is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Senior Scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH); Director of the Harvard/MGH Center on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations, and Health Disparities; Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; and Director of the Consortium on Psychosocial Stress, Spirituality, and Health. She is also a Presidential Scholar at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Shields’ work focuses on the intersection of genomics research and genomic medicine with the interests of minority and low-income communities. She is particularly interested in how social disadvantage “gets under the skin” to produce an increased risk of disease, and how religion, spirituality, or other sources of resiliency might buffer against the adverse effects of stress.