Richard C. Frank, MD, is a hematologist/oncologist and director of cancer research at the Whittingham Cancer Center at Norwalk Hospital. He also serves as medical director of the Mid-Fairfield Hospice in Wilton, CT. He is the author of the book Fighting Cancer with Knowledge and Hope: A Guide for Patients, Families, and Health Care Providers, which won First Place in 2010 at the American Medical Writer’s Association annual book competition.
Before joining Norwalk Hospital in 2000, Frank was an attending physician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in the division of hematologic oncology and was the recipient of a National Institutes of Health Physician-Scientist Grant for research studying the genetic basis of leukemia. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Medicine, from which he received an MD with Distinction in Research. He served his internal medicine residency at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York and hematology/oncology fellowship at Sloan-Kettering.
In 2005, Frank was awarded the Humanitarian Award by the Leukemia-Lymphoma Society of Fairfield County for his commitment to patient care and education. In 2007, he was one of three doctors honored nationwide with the David King Community Clinical Scientist Award from the Association of Community Cancer Centers. He has been repeatedly selected by his peers as one of Connecticut’s “Top Doctors” in surveys published in Connecticut Magazine and in 2011 was named as a Top Doctor in the NY Metro area by Castle Connolly. In 2010, he was appointed to serve on a federal government advisory panel, the Advisory Panel on Medicare Education, sponsored by the Center for Medicare Services.
Frank is the author of numerous medical and scientific articles and lectures frequently to the public on lymphoma and myeloma, new cancer therapies, and the importance of cancer clinical trials. He maintains a web site and blog sponsored by Yale University Press and contributes to WebMD’s cancer blog.
Frank grew up on Long Island and is a graduate of Westbury High School. He lives with his wife, two sons, and dog in Fairfield. In his spare time, he plays tenor saxophone in the popular, (almost) all-physician rock and roll band DNR.