Andrew Spiegel

Andrew Spiegel has a long and personal history in the patient advocate community. In 1998, Spiegel’s mother was diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer. She exhibited numerous symptoms, which were ignored by her physicians, and died nine months later. In a most odd and unfair twist, toward the end of his mother’s life, Spiegel’s father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he died two days before Andrew’s mother. It was then that Spiegel knew the rest of his life would be spent in the patient advocacy world.

Because there was already a patient advocacy group for pancreatic cancer (PANCAN), Spiegel and a group of others founded the Colon Cancer Alliance, now the leading US based national patient advocacy organization dedicated to colon cancer. Mr. Spiegel, an attorney, besides being a co-founder of the organization and longtime board member of the Alliance became CEO in January of 2008 and he ran the CCA for nearly 5 years, before undertaking his next venture, the Global Colon Cancer Association (GCCA).

Currently, Spiegel is co-founder and executive director of the GCCA, an international patient advocacy organization. This organization is an international community of colon cancer patient advocacy organizations and stakeholders dedicated to end the worldwide suffering of the 3rd leading cause of cancer deaths.

In addition to his work in the colon cancer community, Spiegel is an active advocate for healthcare policies both in the US and now worldwide. He frequently speaks on topics such as biosimilar policy development, IP protections for medicines, health technology assessments, personalized medicine and many other areas where the perspective of the patient advocate is important.

Spiegel is currently on the Board of Directors of the International Alliance of Patient Organizations (IAPO) and serves as the Chair of the Fundraising Committee. Spiegel was recently elected as the next IAPO Chair and will take that position in August of 2020. He has also served on the Stand Up to Cancer Advocate Advisory Council. He is a co-founder and currently serves on the steering committee of the Alliance for Safe Biologic Medicines (ASBM). He is on the Board of Directors, and in December 2014 was elected to Chair, of the Digestive Disease National Coalition (DDNC), a founding member of the Coalition to Increase Clinical Trial Participation as well as an active member of many other health care coalitions and organizations.

In 2012, Spiegel received the David Jagelman Award for Patient Advocacy from the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons. In March, 2013, Spiegel was nominated as Exact Science’s first Hero of the Month. In August of 2014, Spiegel received the C-Change Together, Hidden Hero Award. In March of 2019, Spiegel received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Digestive Disease National Coalition.

Spiegel is a 1986 graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science with minors in English and Philosophy. He is a 1989 graduate of the Widener University School of Law where he was an editor of the Delaware Law Forum, an invited member of the Phi Delta Phi legal honors society and a member of the Moot Court Honor Society. After working for a Philadelphia litigation firm, Spiegel opened his own law firm in 1995 and was a participating member of numerous legal organizations in the region.