Kate Castro, MS, RN, AOCN

Kate Castro, MS, RN, AOCN^® is a Nurse Consultant in the Office of the Associate Director of the Healthcare Delivery Research Program. Ms. Castro serves as the Operations Lead for cancer care delivery research responsible for the planning, execution and evaluation of all activities related to program management in the NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP). She is a Program Officer for grantees in the NCORP, a consortium of seven Research Bases and 46 community oncology practices, hospitals, and integrated health systems supporting NCI's clinical trials. Her research interests include care delivery system management of patients receiving oral anticancer agents and multi-level interventions in community-based cancer programs.

Prior to NCORP, Kate led the NCI Community Cancer Centers Program (NCCCP) Quality of Care initiatives within the consortium of 21 community-based cancer centers and health systems spanning 16 states. She has collaborated with the American College of Surgeons Rapid Quality Reporting System team and the American Society of Clinical Oncology Quality Oncology Practice Initiative team to integrate national quality reporting initiatives into community programs. Kate’s thirty years of oncology nursing experience include clinical and care coordination roles in hematology and stem cell transplantation as well as clinical nurse specialist roles in oncology and hematology. Ms. Castro has published on cancer care delivery, stem cell transplant, and oncology nursing topics in peer-reviewed publications and presents at national meetings. Kate received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of North Dakota and her Master of Science from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN.