Pamela Marcus

Pamela Marcus is a Senior Scientist and Program Director in the Healthcare Delivery Research Program's (HDRP) Healthcare Assessment Research Branch (HARB). She manages grants that address healthcare delivery issues in cancer screening, and is the Project Scientist for data harmonization, submission, and sharing in the second round of the Population-based Research to Optimize the Screening Process (PROSPR) Initiative. She is an expert in assessment of cancer screening modalities in both experimental and community settings, and is the author of Assessment of Cancer Screening: A Primer, an open-access textbook. In the past, Dr. Marcus sat on PDQ® Screening and Prevention Editorial Board, and taught an annual 8-week FAES course on assessment of cancer screening data. In 2019 she was awarded a US Embassy Science Fellowship to study oral cavity cancer and betel nut chewing in the Federated States of Micronesia, and spent over a month on-site working with the local and national health departments.

Dr. Marcus began her career at NCI as a postdoctoral Cancer Prevention Fellow. From 1997 to 2011, she was a member of the Division of Cancer Prevention's Biometry Research Group. She was Lead Epidemiologist for the NCI component of the National Lung Screening Trial and published on operational aspects of the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial. Dr. Marcus moved to the Applied Research Program (ARP) in NCI's Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) in 2011, and joined DCCPS’s Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program (EGRP) in 2013. During those years, she continued to manage cancer screening initiatives, including the Research Resource of the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC), and explored emerging issues in cancer screening, such as risk-stratified screening. Dr. Marcus joined HARB in 2017 on half-time detail, and transitioned to full membership in mid-2018.

Dr. Marcus received a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and an MS in Preventive Medicine and in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She also holds the accreditation of Board Certified Editor in the Life Sciences. Her community service activities include Event Director of Kensington parkrun, a free, weekly, timed 5 kilometer run.