David Eton, PhD

David Eton, PhD is a Program Director, in the Outcomes Research Branch (ORB) within the Healthcare Delivery Research Program (HDRP). David’s role within ORB includes administration of grants and contracts in the social and behavioral sciences, scientific oversight of the SEER-CAHPS data resource, and intramural research activities in collaboration with other NCI staff within HDRP. He will serve as a staff specialist providing technical guidance to the scientific community in planning, coordinating, and evaluating research proposals in the social and behavioral sciences as they pertain to areas of interest to the agency. He will also work collaboratively with other NCI staff to propose new areas of research emphasis for the agency to pursue.

David is a social-health psychologist with expertise in the measurement of patient health-status and quality-of-life outcomes, particularly as it pertains to people coping with chronic health conditions, including cancer. Prior to joining HDRP, David worked at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN as a Health Sciences Research Scientist starting in 2009. In 2019, he was promoted to Professor of Health Services Research. His work focused on patient-perceived burdens of treatment and self-management. He has published extensively across a broad array of health care research, including clinical trials and observational studies; development and psychometrics of patient-reported measures and outcomes; social and psychological determinants of health; qualitative and mixed-methods designs, and clinical significance of scores on patient health-status measures. He was actively engaged in research in all three areas in which patient-reported outcome measures are being used today: research, performance measurement, and clinical practice.

David received his PhD in Applied-Experimental Psychology (Specialty: Social Psychology) from Saint Louis University in St. Louis, MO in 1998, and completed a NIMH postdoctoral fellowship in health psychology/behavioral medicine at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA in 2000.