I am a cancer epidemiologist and epidemiology methodologist beginning my second year as a tenure track assistant professor in the department of public health. This purpose of this statement is to provide a brief narrative on my background, accomplishments and goals in the three areas of academic evaluation: teaching, research, and service. I will do this by describing my experience and efforts in four interrelated areas of focus in my career: cancer epidemiology, healthcare delivery, electronic health records, and methods for missing data. Throughout, I reference my published, peer-reviewed literature by the corresponding [line item number] on my CV.
Cancer Epidemiology
I have been studying cancer treatment and outcomes since the beginning …show more content…
To move forward research in the area of detection and treatment of cancer, using EHRs is vital because randomized controlled trials represent only 3% of patients, and most diagnosis and treatment activities take place within the healthcare system, making EHRs the primary repositories for data that have the potential to improve and personalize cancer care. EHR data differ fundamentally from data purposely collected for research however, and EHR study designs must carefully consider data “completeness” in order to avoid bias. My focuses primarily on using EHR data to study breast cancer. Early stage breast cancer is highly curable; there are many different treatment pathways and important unanswered questions about preventive screening, diagnosis and the effectiveness of comparable interventions. Late stage breast cancer and metastatic recurrence are often fatal and very little is known about factors that might improve survival. The longitudinal nature of the EHR makes it an ideal source of information to study cancer care delivery (which can often span years, and may be characterized by multiple treatment episodes). Strategic linkage of EHR with other data resources such as tumor registries, genomic repositories, and survival data provides the opportunity to understand unique characteristics of more severe clinical disease [3, 9]. The EHR also contains address information, allowing linkage with environmental factors potentially associated with risk of occurrence. I have used EHR data from the Sutter Health patient population to report on disparities in cancer screening compliance among subgroups of
Cancer Epidemiology
I have been studying cancer treatment and outcomes since the beginning …show more content…
To move forward research in the area of detection and treatment of cancer, using EHRs is vital because randomized controlled trials represent only 3% of patients, and most diagnosis and treatment activities take place within the healthcare system, making EHRs the primary repositories for data that have the potential to improve and personalize cancer care. EHR data differ fundamentally from data purposely collected for research however, and EHR study designs must carefully consider data “completeness” in order to avoid bias. My focuses primarily on using EHR data to study breast cancer. Early stage breast cancer is highly curable; there are many different treatment pathways and important unanswered questions about preventive screening, diagnosis and the effectiveness of comparable interventions. Late stage breast cancer and metastatic recurrence are often fatal and very little is known about factors that might improve survival. The longitudinal nature of the EHR makes it an ideal source of information to study cancer care delivery (which can often span years, and may be characterized by multiple treatment episodes). Strategic linkage of EHR with other data resources such as tumor registries, genomic repositories, and survival data provides the opportunity to understand unique characteristics of more severe clinical disease [3, 9]. The EHR also contains address information, allowing linkage with environmental factors potentially associated with risk of occurrence. I have used EHR data from the Sutter Health patient population to report on disparities in cancer screening compliance among subgroups of