Cancer and Public Health Experts
Leslie Carnahan Heading link
Expert on: cancer and population health, health disparities.
Leslie Carnahanis a health disparities population researcher. Carnahan is a research scientist at the Office of Community Engagement and Health Equity at the University of Illinois Cancer Center. Their work focuses on understanding multilevel structural and social determinants of health and their impact on cancer disparities, including quality of life and survival. Their current work includes a community navigation program to promote cancer prevention and screening programs at safety net hospitals and community health centers in three Chicago neighborhoods. They are also engaged in evaluations for a number of CDC-funded statewide cancer prevention and health promotion programs for the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Vincent Freeman Heading link
Expert on: the roles of diet and obesity in prostate cancer risk and prognosis.
Vincent Freeman has more than 25 years of experience in conducting research on the epidemiology of prostate cancer. He is well-recognized for his scientific contributions in the areas of the role of dietary factors and body fatness in prostate cancer prognosis. His current research is on the impact of body composition on the risk of prostate cancer recurrence following surgery for clinically early-stage prostate cancer.
Sage Kim Heading link
Expert on: cancer disparities, environmental cancer risks.
Sage Kim’s work on cancer includes the effects of neighborhood context on cancer outcomes, the distribution of environmental hazards and breast cancer risk, and racialized gender norms on care engagement. Currently, she is examining the intergenerational transmission of cancer risk, which utilizes the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data to tease out the elasticity of intergenerational mobility of neighborhood context. She is also involved in a study looking at the effect of exposure to neighborhood violence on colorectal cancer. Additionally, she’s analyzing neighborhood conditions with a group of scholars examining racial differences in DNA methylation among lung cancer patients.
Vida Henderson Heading link
Expert on: cancer disparities, early detection.
Vida Henderson is a behavioral scientist and minority health researcher whose research is focused on cancer disparities, preventive health services utilization, and cancer prevention and early detection. Her primary goal is to improve gender and racial health inequities by exploring associations between the social determinants of physical and mental health and behavioral outcomes. She is currently a senior research scientist and director of the Office of Community Engagement and Health Equity at the University of Illinois Cancer Center. Much of her current research focuses on breast and cervical cancer prevention and early detection. She is currently principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health project, where she is conducting a randomized control clinical trial to test the effectiveness of a culturally targeted decision aid video aimed at promoting genetic counseling utilization among African American women with hereditary risk for breast cancer.
Yamilé Molina Heading link
Expert on: breast cancer, cancer survivors, health promotion, cancer disparities.
Yamilé Molina focuses on financial and social network factors in the context of cancer disparities research. Their current studies include an evaluation the cost effectiveness and spillover effects of a patient navigation program for African American breast cancer survivors and their social networks. Another study is examining community health worker interventions for Latinos who are non-adhering to breast cancer screening guidelines.
Caryn Peterson Heading link
Expert on: social determinants of health in cancer outcomes.
Caryn Peterson focuses on determinants of racial, ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in cancer outcomes, including ovarian and Human Papillomavirus-related cancers. Her current work focuses on developing evidence-based programs to increase acceptability and utilization of the HPV vaccine, as well as screening to prevent HPV-related cancers among underserved individuals. She is also the co-director of UIC’s Cancer Education and Career Development Program, a National Cancer Institute-funded training grant that prepares pre-and postdoctoral fellows to conduct research in cancer disparities research.
Garth Rauscher Heading link
Expert on: cancer disparities, health care quality and access in breast cancer.
Garth Rauscher was involved in development of the Breast Cancer Care in Chicago study of racial and ethnic disparities in breast cancer prognosis, and analyses of multilevel determinants of those disparities. He currently leads the Metro Chicago Breast Cancer Registry (MCBCR), which is one of six active registries that contribute demographic, radiology, and population-based breast cancer data to the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium. The BCSC examines effectiveness of screening and diagnostic imaging modalities, and opportunities for risk-based screening. Other areas of research include leukemia and colon cancer.
Jiehuan Sun Heading link
Expert on: risk prediction, cancer subtype, cancer genomics.
Jiehuan Sun’s primary research interests are to develop statistical methods to deal with big longitudinal medical data including electronic health record data and genomics data. His previous studies include developing novel clustering methods to identity subtypes in breast cancer using gene expression data, building dynamic predictive models to predict mortality based on longitudinal gene expression data and developing gene set analysis tools to identify disease related gene sets (pathways) using longitudinal gene expression data.
Yuan Shao Heading link
Expert On: lung cancer, biomarker for early detection, Mesothelioma, mine worker health.
As an industrial hygienist and occupational epidemiologist, Dr. Shao has been involved in several cancer studies including developing sampling and analytical methods for exhaled breath analysis for the early detection of lung cancer; using epidemiological approaches to find the most health-relevant elongate mineral particle (EMP) dimensions. He also has extensive experience in analyzing and reconstructing historical respirable mine dust data for mine worker health studies.