Dr. Bettina Drake is the Michael F. Neidorff Professor in the Division of Public Health Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine and Associate Director of Community Outreach and Engagement for Siteman Cancer Center. She is a cancer epidemiologist, and her research has focused on identifying preventive strategies and integrating community engagement approaches to reduce cancer disparities.

She received funding from the Department of Defense (DOD) to identify strategies that improve quality of life for metastatic prostate cancer patients and to recruit and maintain a diverse prostate cancer biorepository to foster multidisciplinary prostate cancer research. Currently, she leads two National Cancer Institute (NCI) centers. She is a co-principal investigator on the NCI-funded PECGS grant meant to determine patient engagement among patients of rare cancers and high-risk populations.

She leads as the principal investigator for the community-engaged health equity center, developing the Advancing Cancer Control Equity Research through Transformative (ACCERT) solutions. As Assistant Vice Provost for Community-Engaged Research, she is fostering community engagement as part of the University’s academic mission. She is also the Director of the St. Louis Confluence Collaborative for Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Practice.

Dr. Leslie Deane is a minimally invasive robotic surgeon and endourologist at Howard University, where he is Professor and Chief of the Division of Urology and the R. Frank Jones Endowed Professor of Surgery. He is on staff as an attending urologist at Howard University Hospital.  

Prior to joining the faculty at Howard University, Dr. Deane was Professor of Urology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and an attending urologist at the University of Miami Health System, Jackson Memorial Hospital, and the Bruce W. Carter Miami Veterans Affairs Health System, the latter where he served as the Section Chief for Urology. After completing his fellowship,  

Dr. Deane spent 11 years in Chicago, Illinois, first as an Assistant Professor of Urology and Director of Laparoscopy, Endourology, and Robotic Urologic Surgery at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and then as an Associate Professor of Urology at Rush University Medical Center. 

Dr. Deane is a graduate of the University of the West Indies School of Clinical Medicine and Research at Cave Hill, where he received his medical degree in 1998, with honors in Anatomy and Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Deane was the recipient of the Merck, Sharpe, and Dohme Clinical Prize in Medicine.  

He went on to pursue training in Urological Surgery at the University of Toronto and its prestigious affiliated teaching hospitals, including Sunnybrook and Women’s College, the Toronto General Hospital, St. Michael’s Hospital, the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Princess Margaret Hospital, Mount Sinai Hospital of Toronto, and the Toronto Western Hospital.  

He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He is Board Certified by the American Board of Urology and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Urology. He holds licensure in the District of Columbia, Florida, and California. 

Dr. Deane specializes in the minimally invasive management of urologic malignancies including cancers of the prostate, bladder, ureter, and kidney and has extensive experience in robotic surgery for these conditions. He also treats complex kidney stone disease and obstructions of the upper urinary tract requiring reconstruction. 

Dr. Deane also performs these complex robotic procedures in patients who are unwilling to accept blood and blood products for religious or other reasons. This means that with such meticulous attention to detail, the overall risk and rate of requiring a blood transfusion is exceedingly low. 

Over the past decade and a half, Dr. Deane pioneered approaches in minimally invasive urological surgery that avoid the use of narcotic/opioid-based medications for post-operative pain control.