Compassionate caregivers around the country are doing extraordinary work on the front lines of the fight against cancer. These doctors, nurses, social workers, and others offer comfort, courage, and inspiration to people facing cancer and their families.

These innovative health care professionals, who go above and beyond the call of duty every day, often are overlooked for the service they provide. That’s why former American Cancer Society Executive Vice President Lane W. Adams chose to honor these unsung heroes with an award that recognizes people for extending the “warm hand of service” to others.

The Lane Adams Quality of Life Award reflects Adams’ own service to people affected by cancer. This visionary leader, who rose to the position of executive vice president of the Society, is remembered as a driving force behind such patient service programs as Reach to Recovery®, I Can Cope®, and Road to Recovery®.

Nominations for the 2009 Lane Adams Quality of Life Award are being accepted until October 15, 2008. Honorees will be recognized at the Society’s National Board of Directors meeting in May in Atlanta.

The 2008 award recipients included people like Kathy Lopeman, who is something of a one-person cancer support system in Soldotna, Alaska. If there is a cancer patient in need, the oncology nurse at Central Peninsula Hospital is there day or night -- from starting supporting groups at the hospital to participating in Relay For Life®. Karen Allison, another of this year’s honorees, is a pediatric nurse practitioner at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. But colleagues say she’s much more than that, having served as an advocate, coach, cheerleader, foster mother, and friend to the patients she’s treated during the past four decades.

For more information about the Lane Adams award and for nomination forms, visit www.cancer.org/laneadams.