0 to 1 · Medical education

What can a $3,000 sponsorship do in oncology?

A sponsor asked for something big in breast cancer, on a budget too small for anything big. Spending it on one or two future oncologists instead started a programme that has run for eleven years and trained more than 100 doctors.

Cancer Prevention Foundation · 2015 ·
My role
Came up with the idea and built it from scratch: the call for applications, advertising, talking to candidates, the selection itself.
Team
At the start, two people: the foundation's founder and me
Timeframe
2015, first intake
The constraint
About $3,000 from a sponsor, and a foundation in a cash crunch.

If you only read one thing

A sponsor's budget was too small to do anything wide, so we did something deep: an open competition to pay for a strong graduate's oncology residency. We planned for two grants. The first intake took ten, and the competition grew into the Higher School of Oncology: eleven intakes and more than 100 oncologists trained.

The situation

The Cancer Prevention Foundation in St Petersburg was small then, and short of money. An insurance company came to us with an offer: let's do something large-scale in breast cancer. The budget was about $3,000.

Spread across a city, that buys a few posters and a screening day nobody remembers. The money was a drop in the ocean for a crowd. But for one person it was a lot: enough to change where a young doctor's career goes.

The fork

Option A

Do what the sponsor asked

A visible breast cancer campaign. Easy to agree, easy to report on, and gone a month later.

Option B · chosen

Spend it on one or two people

Pay for a strong medical graduate's residency at the N.N. Petrov Research Institute of Oncology, chosen through an open competition.

Russia did not lack breast cancer awareness campaigns. It lacked good oncologists. One well-trained doctor treats thousands of patients over a career, so the same money went much further this way. The competition mattered as much as the grant: it made the selection public, so the best graduates would come to us.

What shipped

It did not even have a name in the first year: just a competition for residency grants. An open call for final-year medical students and graduates, with selection on medical knowledge, English and motivation. At first the project was the founder and me, so the competition was mine end to end: the idea, the advertising, every conversation with candidates and the selection itself.

In practice that meant a simple landing page, ads on VKontakte to reach graduates who had never heard of us, and selection in stages: an online application, then tasks that test clinical thinking and cannot be looked up (the founder helped write those), then an in-person exam at the institute.

What happened

There were far more applications than we expected, and too many strong people to pick two. The director of the institute and the sponsor found more money, and the first intake took ten. Then a US-based surgical oncologist joined to teach them, and the competition became a two-year programme alongside residency: the Higher School of Oncology.

The first intake of the programme and its organisers standing in front of the N.N. Petrov Research Institute of Oncology in St Petersburg. Alex is on the far left.
The first intake in front of the Petrov institute, 2015. I am on the far left.
2 → 10grants planned, and residents in the first intake
38applications per place by 2017
108oncologists trained, about one in a hundred in Russia
11intakes by 2025, still running
Alex taking a selfie in front of the second intake of the programme, a large group of young doctors gathered at the bust in front of the N.N. Petrov Research Institute of Oncology.
The second intake, a year later, at the same spot.

95% of graduates work in public hospitals, and each sees about 500 patients a year. Two have made Forbes Russia's 30 Under 30: Polina Shilo in 2020, who now runs the programme, and Rostislav Pavlov in 2021. It became the foundation's largest programme.

A large group of Higher School of Oncology residents, candidates and organisers in a conference room in 2018, two of them in black HSO Crew T-shirts.
Higher School of Oncology, 2018. That year 315 people applied for 11 grants. Photo: Profilaktika Media.

Measured, not just counted

The programme was studied and published in JCO Global Oncology in 2021. Residents' evidence-based medicine scores on the Fresno test rose from a median of 68 to 111. On patient communication scenarios they scored 71 and 78, against 15 and 22 for physicians outside the programme. In 2025 an abstract on its first decade was published in the ASCO Annual Meeting proceedings.

The second country

In 2023 the model moved to Kazakhstan as IPSM.KZ, and I carried it over as a product: the website, the entrance test, candidate selection and advertising. It was working within two months and is still running, with more than 800 applications in its first three years.

Sources

Money is in US dollars: the sponsor’s budget was 200,000 ₽, converted at the 2015 rate.

The takeaway

A small budget cannot be wide, but it can be deep. Put all of it where it changes one outcome completely, and make the selection public: the competition itself brought us the people, the attention and the next round of money.

All cases Press & papers