Rachel B. Salit, MD

What drew you to oncology?

After exploring different career paths in health care, I got a job in an inner-city hospital working for an inpatient team of doctors. Each day, I accompanied them on their busy rounds, taking histories and examining patients. Seeing these patients evolve from sick to well clinched it for me: I decided that providing hands-on medical care was what I wanted to do. Treating patients with cancer is a very intimate experience; you get to know their hopes and desires. To make someone better who has so much to live for — or to support someone who has not achieved a successful cure — is both extremely challenging and deeply rewarding.

What is your approach to care and treatment?

A cancer diagnosis can be traumatic — not only for you, but your whole support system. One of the reasons I became a hematologist-oncologist is that I really get to treat the whole person and not just their disease, so that’s the mindset I bring to our relationship. I aim to provide you with the most thorough information possible about your disease and my best medical opinion about how to move forward. I also value your autonomy and your voice; the ultimate decision about any particular treatment is yours. This philosophy has resulted in many positive long-term relationships with those I am privileged to care for.

Provider Background

Specialty: Medical Oncology

Area of clinical practice

Adult Blood and Marrow Transplantation

Blood cancers

I am a hematologist-oncologist who specializes in providing bone marrow and stem cell transplants to adult patients with blood cancers, such as leukemia and lymphoma. I am on the inpatient bone marrow transplant service at the UW Medical Center - Montlake and the outpatient allogeneic transplant service at Fred Hutch, which follows patients for the first 100 days post-transplant. I also frequently see patients through Fred Hutch’s Long-Term Follow-Up Program.

As a member of the Umbilical Cord Blood Transplant (UCBT) research program at Fred Hutch, I study how to improve long-term outcomes for patients who have UCBTs. Umbilical cord blood is abundant in stem cells, and this type of transplant is often used for patients who don’t have a donor with a matching tissue type. I investigate ways to reduce infection, prevent life-threatening post-transplant complications like graft-versus-host disease, decrease relapse and improve quality of life. I am also interested in using cord blood to treat myeloproliferative diseases, a slow-growing group of blood cancers.