Dr. David Dickens, Division Chief, Nemours Children’s Hospital, Florida 

Dr. David Dickens, brings 25 years of pediatric hematology oncology experience to Central Florida, where he is charged with building a world-class cancer, blood disorder, and bone marrow transplant program at Nemours Children’s Hospital, Florida. In an interview with Invest:, Dickens outlines a disciplined, sequenced investment strategy that demands specialized talent, infrastructure, and research partnerships to meet the needs of a rapidly growing region. “If Orlando is going to be built as a world-class community, it should expect world-class healthcare,” said Dickens.

What drew you to this role, and what is the vision you are building toward at Nemours Children’s?

I graduated from medical school 30 years ago and have been practicing pediatric hematology oncology for the last 25 years. I trained at Cincinnati Children’s, practiced in Grand Rapids, Michigan for 17 years, and most recently at the University of Iowa. What drew me here is the ability to build a world-class pediatric cancer, blood disorder, and bone marrow transplant clinic in Central Florida. It’s a unique opportunity, because many hospitals that have been around for a long time have already established themselves as those kinds of centers, and the ones that want to become that require a significant amount of investment.

If you want a big return like this, it requires a big investment. Such investments have become particularly challenging in 2026 where the financial climate in hospital systems is extremely strained, making it difficult for programs to grow. It was clear to me during my recruitment that the leadership at Nemours Children’s and the state of Florida were willing to make that investment in Orlando because it is what the community needs and deserves. Nemours Children’s, the team of providers, and the state of Florida are working together with a vision that if Orlando is going to be built as a world-class community, it should expect world-class healthcare.

What are your top priorities for the program in your first year?

The absolute first priority is to build a service that offers cellular therapies and bone marrow transplants. There are situations in our field where that becomes a necessary part of care, and that care is intense. Traveling to receive it or receiving it somewhere where you can’t be assured of the best possible outcome is incredibly challenging. I want that to be here.

To make that happen, we have to hire doctors who specialize in that type of care, invest in renovating our facilities to offer treatment in the safest possible manner, and put the rest of the infrastructure in place — the tools, equipment, and ancillary services. It has to be done in a very structured sequence. Nemours Children’s had the discipline, knowledge, and vision to understand how to build that structure properly, and that work actually started before I even arrived. I’m catalyzing progress toward making this happen as quickly as possible, because patients need those services right now. That’s the biggest gap in our cancer program that needs to be filled urgently.

What does a strong pediatric cancer program require to succeed in a high-growth market like Central Florida?

The care of a cancer patient or a patient with a blood disorder is what’s called multidisciplinary — it’s a team sport. You can’t just fill it with doctors. You need nurses, social workers, pharmacists, and all of these people working together on the same team, the same way you would design any team or orchestra. Every specialized part has to work together for it to work at its best.

The good news is that when I arrived, there was already a very solid foundation — compassionate, smart, dedicated healthcare providers who are exactly the kind you’d want caring for your child. I don’t have to start from scratch. What I have to do is build on it, design it, and add what’s missing so that everyone performs at their maximum potential in their area.

What role does research play in your program?

Research is a very complicated subject that I can boil down into one word in my field: hope. Anyone who ever had to meet me in a professional capacity would want me to say one thing: “I can fix this; I can cure this.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen. The only way we get a future where that is possible is through research, where we take new ideas and new medications and apply them to difficult situations to see if they can help better than what we have today.

Research begins in the lab, but at some point it also means running clinical trials — giving a child with an incurable disease access to a treatment that hasn’t been tried yet but needs to be

tested. That’s where Nemours Children’s can distinguish itself by offering treatments that others can’t. To do that, we have to partner with institutions of higher learning. The relationships we have in Medical City with the University of Central Florida are going to be critical, because without that base, connectivity to anyone doing basic sciences is very hard. 

I also bring established relationships with industry partners who develop these new treatments. They sponsor many early phase, or Phase 1 clinical trials. This is what we do for kids

who have been failed by the limits of our current treatments. By doing so, we can offer that hope locally in a way that other programs can’t.

How is Nemours Children’s working to improve access to advanced pediatric oncology care for underserved communities?

It is a struggle for Nemours Children’s, as it is everywhere. Clinicians, particularly pediatricians, often grapple with what’s called moral distress created by the reality that there is unequal access to the same level of care based on socioeconomic variables. It is very difficult for doctors and hospitals to fix that problem on their own. That’s a societal problem.

That’s part of why the partnership with the state became so important. The expectations tied to the State of Florida’s Cancer Connect Collaborative Research grant funding include identifying real solutions to this problem. There are emerging models of care focused on how healthcare providers can address social barriers. A lot of it is addressed through compassion and creativity. There are resources available to help address barriers to access, and I’ve already seen that in action during my brief time here.