Built for healthy collaboration

Public Health Sciences Division building is the new front door to the center’s Day Campus and the embodiment of a unifying vision

Embedded in the pavement at the entry to Fred Hutchinson’s new Pubic Health Sciences building, the bronze letters that once labeled the center’s original home now send a new message. Instead of welcoming people to a single building, the rescued letters welcome them to an entire campus.

With the opening of the PHS building, the center has reached the end of a long journey toward an ambitious goal — uniting Fred Hutchinson’s scientific divisions on one campus.

Capping a series of construction projects that started in 1988, the PHS building is the sixth new facility to be built on the Robert W. Day Campus, which is named after the center’s former president whose vision inspired development of the 14-acre campus at South Lake Union.

Designed by the Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, the building combines offices, clinics and laboratories under a single roof while also serving members of the public who participate in public-health studies.

Perhaps more than any other facility on campus, the PHS building embodies the spirit of collaboration that drives Fred Hutchinson forward. Externally, the building’s location in the heart of the campus will forge closer links between PHS staff and their colleagues in the Clinical Research, Basic Sciences and Human Biology divisions. Internally, the facility has public areas — break rooms, café and coffee bar — intended to promote interaction among PHS staff as well as visitors to the building.

“Collaboration among scientists across different disciplines is crucial to our mission,” said Dr. Lee Hartwell, center president and director. “Collaboration is the key to accelerating our cancer research. The more interaction among different scientific disciplines, the better.” Equally significant, Hartwell said, is the new building’s ability to accommodate PHS’ laboratories, which had been separately housed.

PHS Division identifies risks, develops tools for cancer detection, prevention

The largest laboratory at Fred Hutchinson is part of the Public Health Sciences Division. “Our lab is the entire world population,” said Dr. John Potter, division director.

While scientists from the center’s other divisions focus on the behavior of diseases within cells, organs and the overall human body, PHS researchers target the broader factors — lifestyle, environment, family history — that drive a disease’s behavior within entire populations. Through studies under way across the country and around the globe, PHS scientists strive to identify risks, develop detection tools and devise prevention strategies for cancer and other serious health problems.

Established in 1982 as one of the center’s four research divisions, PHS has evolved into one of the largest and most comprehensive groups of its kind in the world.

PHS consists of four programs. Cancer Prevention develops and evaluates intervention strategies, including screening programs, dietary interventions and smoking prevention, in populations of varying risks. Epidemiology studies environment, behavior, genetics and other personal characteristics as causes of cancer. Cancer Biology is the laboratory-based program that is a key link between PHS and the Human Biology Division. Biostatistics/Biomathematics provides study-design and analysis expertise and oversight for large and small-scale studies.

Few studies can proceed without the participation of human volunteers who contribute the time, effort and information necessary to generate the data upon which studies are based. Participants are needed with various backgrounds and health histories, including many healthy people. To find out more, visit our Web site at www.fhcrc.org/donating/participate.html or call (800) 4-CANCER.