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Cancer Causes & Control

An International Journal of Studies of Cancer in Human Populations

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Cancer Causes & Control - Meet the Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief

Immaculata De Vivo, MPH, PhD, is Professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School for Public Health, and Co-Director for Science at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

Associate Editors

Prajakta Adsul, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and a Member of the Cancer Control and Population Sciences Research Program, at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of New Mexico. Most recently, she was nominated to serve as the Inaugural Director of the newly established Center for Advancing Dissemination and Implementation Science at UNM. She completed her medical training in India and was a Cancer Prevention Fellow with the Implementation Science team at the National Cancer Institute, before joining UNM as faculty. As an implementation scientist, she uses community-based and partnership-driven participatory research approaches focused on health equity, often utilizing mixed methods that can help develop and test interventions and implementation strategies in pragmatic studies for cancer prevention and control.

Emma H. Allott, PhD, is a Lecturer in Molecular Cancer Epidemiology at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Trinity Translational Medicine Institute at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her research integrates epidemiologic methods and design with molecular tumour profiling to identify mechanisms linking dietary and lifestyle factors with cancer risk and progression. Her current work utilizes imaging, metabolomics, and genomics data to study the role of obesity and metabolic health in prostate cancer outcomes, molecular histopathology approaches to characterize the tumour microenvironment, and molecular epidemiology studies with genomic profiling of archival tissue samples to examine the effect of statin use and dysregulated tumour lipid metabolism on lethal prostate cancer risk.

Kimlin Tam Ashing, Ph.D is Professor Beckman Research Institute, Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement, and Founding Director of the Center of Community Alliance for Research and Education, City of Hope Medical Center. As an advocate-population scientist, I am working closely with multiethnic, BIPOC, multisectoral and multidisciplinary partners to develop and implement evidenced, culturally, clinically and community responsive studies. By conducting multidisciplinary, translational, team science research that engages advocates, my mission is to deliver transformative research to speed-up and ensure public benefit of biomedical research and advancements. I am engaged in several national leadership roles within the American Association for Cancer Researchers; NIH-funded African-Caribbean Cancer Consortium where I co-chair the Women’s Cancers Working-Group; Society of Behavioral Medicine; Cancer Special Interest Group-Health Equity; CancerCare Patient Values Initiative_Patient Values Working-Group; and ASCO-Depression and Anxiety Expert Panel. I am a Life member of Association of Black Psychologists. I am co-Principal investigator for the iCCaRE Consortium for Black men focused on improving survivorship care and outcomes. I am a notable leader in examining health disparities, societal/social determinants, and survivorship. I have published over 100 articles and book chapters. In 2017, she coauthored Detecting and Living with Breast Cancer: for Dummies, Wiley, NY. She thrives on faith, family, science for and to society, and organic gardening.

Kimberly Bertrand, ScD, is Associate Professor at the Boston University School of Medicine and Epidemiologist at the Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University. Dr. Bertrand’s current research efforts focus on understanding racial disparities in cancer incidence and outcomes, primarily for breast cancer. Other areas of research interest include the epidemiology of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple myeloma. The majority of her research to date has been based in large, well-established cohorts and has focused on modifiable lifestyle risk factors. She also has experience in the analysis of geospatial-based exposures in relation to cancer as well as biomarker-based epidemiologic studies.

Brenda Birmann, ScD, is Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Associate Epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of hematopoietic malignancies, oncogenic virus infections, and the assessment of immune dysfunction for epidemiologic studies. Her primary active research projects are prospective evaluations of lifestyle correlates of energy balance (anthropometric measures, physical activity, diet) and other environmental risk factors, as well as biomarkers of growth factor, cytokine and other endogenous hormone dysregulation, in the etiology and survival of multiple myeloma and lymphoma.

Heather M. Brandt, PhD, is Member at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Her research focuses on working with communities to prevent and control cancer by examining, describing and intervening on cancer-related health disparities through innovative approaches in partnership with the community. She has worked with churches, nonprofit organizations and health care settings in rural areas of South Carolina to increase cervical cancer screening, HPV vaccination and colorectal cancer screening.

Theodore M. Brasky, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and Cancer Epidemiologist at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. Dr. Brasky has several research interests, including the relation of diet, dietary supplements, and medications with cancer risk and progression. Dr. Brasky has a secondary interest in tobacco cessation and use of novel tobacco products in cancer patients.

Eunyoung Cho, ScD, is Associate Professor of Dermatology and Epidemiology at Brown University. Dr. Cho’s primary research interest is evaluating the role of diet and nutrition in relation to the development of chronic diseases using epidemiologic approach. Dr. Cho’s current research largely focuses on diet and nutrition in relation to skin cancer and other dermatological disorders including alopecia areata, psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, and rosacea. She has also led several projects on age-related macular degeneration, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, and kidney cancer.

Mengmeng Du, ScD, is an assistant member and assistant attending epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She primarily studies risk factors (inherited and modifiable) and tumor mutation profiles for colorectal, endometrial, and pancreatic cancers. Her interests also encompass cancer biomarkers, risk prediction, and surveillance. Dr. Du uses data from several large international consortia, observational studies, and clinical populations.

Laura Fejerman, PhD, is the Placer Breast Cancer Endowed Chair and Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine at the University of California Davis. She is the Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement and Director of the Women’s Cancer Care and Research Program (WeCARE) at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Fejerman’s research focuses on the discovery of genetic and non-genetic factors that contribute to breast cancer risk and prognosis in Hispanic/Latinx individuals. She is passionate about eliminating cancer health disparities and works on the development and implementation of cancer education and navigation programs tailored to underserved and under resourced communities.

Holly R. Harris, ScD, MPH, is Assistant Member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle. Dr. Harris’s research broadly examines lifestyle, nutrition, and genetic factors and their impact on women’s health. Specifically, it is focused on ovarian and breast cancer, as well as hormonally related conditions that have shared reproductive risk factors with these diseases, including endometriosis and uterine fibroids. Her research aims to understand the role of the modifiable factors across the life course (e.g., diet and lifestyle) on the risk of these conditions using both observational cohorts and intervention studies. In addition, Dr. Harris’s research examines the interrelatedness of non-malignant and malignant conditions and their shared risk factors. In particular, focusing on understanding the endometriosis to ovarian cancer transition and identifying sub-groups of women that would most benefit from ovarian cancer screening modalities that are not currently appropriate for population-based use.

Jaime E. Hart, ScD, is Assistant Professor at the Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School and the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Hart’s research focuses on the impacts of environmental exposures on chronic disease risk and on examining the impacts of multiple exposures simultaneously (e.g. the external exposome). She also has a strong emphasis on applying spatial methods and geographic information systems (GIS) to develop exposure models, map patterns of diseases and exposures, and append contextual measures to long standing prospective cohorts. 

Michelle D. Holmes, MD, DrPH, is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an associate professor in the department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health.  Her research interests include lifestyle factors (diet, weight change, physical activity, and psychosocial factors, common medications like aspirin) affecting quality of life and survival after a cancer diagnosis, as well as the association between diet and breast cancer risk. She has helped to design a collaborative longitudinal study of non-communicable disease (obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer) at 5 sites in sub-Saharan Africa.

Corinne E Joshu, PhD, MPH, is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a member of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. Her research interests include the role of modifiable risk factors, including obesity, in cancer incidence and survival after a cancer diagnosis. She also conducts research to identify opportunities to improve cancer prevention and treatment among the general population, as well as among potentially underserved communities, including people living with HIV and Medicaid beneficiaries. Her work is based within population-based observational cohort studies, administrative insurance claims, integrated health systems data, and information from cancer registries and vital statistics.

Elizabeth D. Kantor, PhD, is an Assistant Member at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Her research centers on understanding how modifiable exposures, such as drugs and supplements, relate to cancer risk and survival. Dr. Kantor seeks to address these research interests through use of data from a variety of sources, including a number of epidemiologic cohorts, nationally representative surveys, and integrated healthcare delivery systems.

Pagona Lagiou, MD, MSc, PhD, is Chair of the Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics at the School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She serves as Professor of Hygiene and Epidemiology at the same Department and as Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Lagiou has served as Foreign Adjunct Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, as well as a panel member at the European Food Safety Authority and the European Research Council. She is Head of the WHO Collaborating Center for Nutrition and Health in Athens, Greece and her research interests include the nutritional and endocrine epidemiology and etiology of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and other chronic conditions. 

Jason Liu, ScD, MS, MPH, is Associate Professor at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University's Institute of Public Health in Taipei, Taiwan. He is particularly interested in early-onset cancer epidemiologic research. He has led research projects to study the characteristics and prognosis of early-onset cancers, early-onset cancer incidence and survival trends, and the subsequent health of early-onset cancer survivors and those with other early-onset diseases. His research projects have also examined the sociodemographic and geographic distributions of cancers and cancer-related behaviors. Besides contributing to the field of cancer epidemiology in Taiwan, he has actively led research projects in his school’s International Health Program to contribute to international health research in cancer epidemiology.

Erin L. Marcotte, MPH, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Clinical Research in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota. She works in collaboration with colleagues nationally and internationally through the Children's Oncology Group and the Childhood Cancer and Leukemia International Consortium (CLIC). Dr. Marcotte’s primary research is focused on the genetic, molecular, and environmental causes of childhood leukemia and hepatoblastoma. She is also interested in understanding how maternal and early life nutrition impact childhood cancer risk. Finally, she has several ongoing projects which aim to understand cancer risk among individuals with neurofibromatosis type I.

Dominique Michaud, ScD, is a Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. Her research is mainly focused on better understanding the causes of pancreatic and brain cancers with the goal of providing means to prevent these deadly cancers. Dr. Michaud works primarily with large cohort studies and examines risk factors such as diet, BMI, allergies, infection, and genetic susceptibility.

Alison M. Mondul, PhD, MSPH, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Dr. Mondul studies the role of modifiable risk factors in the etiology of cancer. In particular,she studies how lifestyle factors (such as use of common medications) and factors related to diet and nutrition (such as micronutrients and lipids) may influence prostate and head and neck cancers, as well as benign prostatic hyperplasia. In order to study these associations Dr. Mondul employs molecular epidemiologic techniques including hypothesis-driven studies of serum biomarkers, genome-wide association studies, and metabolomic profiling.

Hazel B. Nichols, PhD, is an Associate Professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health and a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research is focused on improving cancer care by providing epidemiologic evidence to guide personal and medical decision-making around cancer risk and survivorship. Her research addresses the intersection of cancer and pregnancy across the lifespan; and health outcomes and survivorship after an endometrial, breast, or adolescent or young adult cancer diagnosis. Her work is based within population-based observational cohort studies, cohorts identified in health systems data, and uses linked information from cancer registries, vital statistics, healthcare databases, and administrative insurance claims.

Jessica Petrick, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor at the Boston University School of Medicine and Epidemiologist at the Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University. Dr. Petrick’s research focuses on the epidemiology of gastrointestinal cancers, including colorectal, liver, and esophageal. The emphasis of her current research is on nutritional and molecular factors, including the metabolome and microbiome, which may contribute to health disparities along the cancer continuum—from precursor lesions to invasive cancer through mortality.

Camille Ragin, PhD, MPH, is Professor in the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center-Temple University Health System. Dr. Ragin’s research efforts focus on cancer epidemiology and prevention primarily in Black populations. Her areas of research involve investigations of the influence of culture and genetic ancestry on health, cancer development, survivorship, health disparities, and immigrant health She has forged collaborations nationally and internationally with highly esteemed researchers to examine disparities in prostate, cervical, breast, head and neck, and lung cancers.

Eva Schernhammer, MD, is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on the influence of lifestyle as well as gene-environment interactions in the context of chronic diseases. These include a variety of cancers such as breast, colon, and pancreatic cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, as well as neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s disease and its relation with cancer etiology, to further understand biological mechanisms in carcinogenesis.

Siobhan Sutcliffe, PhD, is a Professor at the Washington University School of Medicine. She is an epidemiologist whose longstanding research interests are infectious causes of cancer and chronic diseases. Her research to date has focused on infectious or inflammatory causes of prostate cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), including studies on the possible roles of gonorrhea, syphilis, Chlamydia trachomatis infection, Trichomonas vaginalisinfection, human papillomavirus infection, human herpesvirus type 8 infection, and several other viral infections in prostate cancer and/or BPH development.

Emanuela Taioli, MD PhD is Professor of Population Health and Science and of Thoracic Surgery, and the Director of the Institute for Translational Epidemiology, and as Director of the Center for the Study of Thoracic Diseases Outcomes.  She is also Associate Director for Population Science and a Co-Leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at The Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research interest and expertise is in the area of cancer epidemiology.

Kathryn Terry, ScD, is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. She is interested in how genetic variation and environmental exposures influence ovarian cancer risk and survival. In particular, her research focuses on how risk may vary by subtypes of ovarian cancer which may be defined by histologic subtype, cell or origin, or etiologic pathway. Her research interest and expertise is in the area of cancer epidemiology.

Britton Trabert, PhD, MS, is Earl Stadtman Investigator at the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, DHHS. Dr. Trabert’s research focuses on the hormonal etiology of female cancers and the epidemiology and etiologic heterogeneity of ovarian and endometrial cancers. Specifically, she has focused on clarifying the role of both systemic and local inflammation in ovarian and endometrial carcinogenesis. Dr. Trabert has contributed significantly to improving the scientific understanding of the relationship between exogenous hormone use and endogenous hormone levels and female cancer risk. Dr. Trabert’s diverse research portfolio has included methodologic validation of hormone assays and evaluation of cancer trends using US and international cancer registries as well as the evaluation of cancer risk factors in large population-based case-control and cohort studies and in international consortia. She also has considerable expertise leading molecular epidemiologic studies.

Erika Trapl, PhD is Associate Professor of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and Director of the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods at Case Western Reserve University. She also serves as the Associate Director of Community Outreach and Engagement at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. She has an extensive history in community-based tobacco control research and evaluation, with specific interest in alternative tobacco product use among adolescents and young adults. Dr. Trapl’s interests extend to other tobacco use, dietary interventions, and cancer screening behaviors among marginalized populations, as well as examining implementation of individual, systems, and policy interventions to identify opportunities to increase reach, broaden impact, and improve health.

Erica T. Warner, ScD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Assistant Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research investigates approaches to improve cancer early detection, access to and uptake of breast, lung, and colorectal cancer screening, as well as breast cancer survival and survivorship. Her work emphasizes the experiences of underserved populations that disproportionately experience racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities.

Eleanor Watts, DPhil, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Rockville. Her research focuses on biomarkers, particularly proteomics, hormones, genetics, and metabolomics and their associations with cancer risk. She also investigates modifiable risk factors such as physical activity and obesity and the mediating biomarkers through which they exert their effects. She has expertise in utilizing observational and Mendelian randomization methods.

Lusine Yaghjyan, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and an Epidemiologist at the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions and College of Medicine. Dr. Yaghjayn’s research primarily focuses on etiology and molecular epidemiology of breast cancer, benign breast disease, and high mammographic breast density. She has been working with several well-established cohorts to examine associations of various factors early in life and in adulthood with these outcomes. Dr. Yaghjyan currently focuses on emerging areas in breast cancer research, such as potential application of breast stem cell markers for risk prediction in women with benign breast biopsies and contributions of gut microbiota to breast carcinogenesis. Other areas of her research include the role of environmental risk factors, such as endocrine disruptors and air pollution, in breast cancer etiology.

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