HEROiC Conference on Health Economic Research Collaborations to Improve Cancer Care

Brenda A. Adjei, EdD, MPA

Brenda A. Adjei, EdD, MPA is a Social and Behavioral Scientist Administrator in the Office of the Associate Director of the Healthcare Delivery Research Program (HDRP). She also serves as Program Director for the Cancer Care Delivery Research component of the NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) and co-lead for the NCORP Disparities Integration Emphasis Group. Within HDRP, Dr. Adjei's programmatic focus seeks to strengthen the Program's healthcare disparities research profile, which includes leading initiatives focused on addressing social risks in cancer care delivery and advancing health equity in cancer prevention and control.

Janet S. de Moor, PhD, MPH
demoorjs@mail.nih.gov

Janet S. de Moor, PhD, MPH is the Acting Associate Director of the Healthcare Delivery Research Program in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute. In this role, she leads research and programmatic activities focused on cancer care delivery, cancer-related financial hardship, employment disruption, and cancer survivorship. Dr. de Moor previously served as a Program Director in the Healthcare Delivery Research Program and prior to that the Office of Cancer Survivorship. Before coming to the National Cancer Institute in 2011, Dr. de Moor was on the faculty of The Ohio State University College of Public Health. She received her Master of Public Health degree and Doctorate in Behavioral Science from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health.

Robin Yabroff, PhD, MBA
robin.yabroff@cancer.org

Robin Yabroff, PhD, MBA is an epidemiologist and Scientific Vice President, Health Services Research at the American Cancer Society. She conducts research on financial hardship and the economic burden of cancer; patterns of cancer care, including high-cost prescription drugs; health insurance benefit design; and patient, provider, and system factors associated with quality and value of cancer care. Dr. Yabroff has more than 25 years of health services research experience and has held positions within the Office of Health Policy, Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Health Services and Economics Branch of the National Cancer Institute, and the faculty of the Lombardi Cancer Center, Georgetown University.

She earned her PhD in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She has Adjunct positions in the Department of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University and Department of Health Policy and Management, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. Dr. Yabroff has co-authored over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles, editorials, and book chapters. She is a frequent speaker at national and international scientific meetings and serves as Deputy Editor for the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and member of the Editorial Boards of the JCO Oncology Practice and the Journal of Cancer Survivorship.

Paul Doria-Rose, PhD
doriarop@mail.nih.gov

Paul Doria-Rose, DVM, PhD received his PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Washington in 2001, and his Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from Cornell University in 1996. He is the Chief of the Healthcare Assessment Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute. In this role, he coordinates large research initiatives focused on cancer care delivery in community settings, including Population-based Research to Optimize the Screening PRocess (PROSPR). He also oversees the development of data resources to support economic and health services research across the cancer continuum. His personal research is focused on the evaluation of cancer screening in community healthcare delivery settings.

Donatus U. Ekwueme, PhD, MS

Donatus U. Ekwueme, PhD, MS is the Senior Health Economist in the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control (DCPC), National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the past 20 years, Dr. Ekwueme has used state-of-the-art economic principles and methods to conduct health and health policy research on domestic and international public health programs in several national centers within CDC.

Dr. Ekwueme serves as the senior health economist in DCPC. In this role, he leads DCPC's efforts to use microeconomic principles and methods to address the economic burden of cancer and identify approaches to minimize its effect on patients, their families, and the population in the United States and other countries. Dr. Ekwueme led the development of a cost assessment tool to evaluate and estimate the economics of national cancer prevention and control programs for medically underserved low-income populations. He uses modeling techniques to understand the association between economics, exposure factors (genetic, biological, environmental, occupational, and behavioral), and cancer prevention and control. He provides easy-to-understand economic cost information to help public health leaders make informed decisions on the most effective and efficient methods of allocating health care resources.

Dr. Ekwueme collaborates with CDC's global and domestic partners. He served as a consultant to the World Health Organization and worked in several sub-Saharan African and English-speaking Caribbean countries conducting health economics research in communicable and non-communicable diseases. He is a member of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study Network. In domestic research, Dr. Ekwueme represents CDC in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Experiences with Cancer Survivorship Supplement. The supplement is a collaborative effort to improve publicly available data for estimating the burden of cancer in the United States. He is a founding member of HEROiC.

Lindsey Enewold, PhD, MPH
enewoldlr@mail.nih.gov

Lindsey Enewold, PhD, MPH is an Epidemiologist in the Healthcare Assessment Research Branch of the Healthcare Delivery Research Program. Dr. Enewold's expertise is in data linkages and health services research, with a focus on health disparities, genetic testing, treatment patterns, patient outcomes, and health economics. At NCI, Dr. Enewold leads the SEER-Medicare and SEER-Medicaid initiatives and is actively creating new data linkages. Studies by Dr. Enewold have evaluated racial disparities in cancer presentation, treatment, and survival; the uptake of genetic testing and targeted therapies; and estimated and projected cancer-related costs and the healthcare workforce needed to care for cancer survivors in the U.S. Dr. Enewold received her PhD in Epidemiology with a concentration in Genetic Epidemiology of Cancer from Johns Hopkins University and she has a MPH with a concentration in Epidemiology from Emory University and a BS in Biology from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Prior to joining NCI, she worked for the U.S. Military Cancer Institute assessing cancer incidence, treatment, and prognosis using the Department of Defense's (DoD) linked cancer registry and TRICARE administrative billing data.

Percy Guzman, MD, MSc
percy.guzman@nih.gov

Percy Guzman, MD, MSc, is a Cancer Prevention Fellow in the Healthcare Assessment Research Branch of the Healthcare Delivery Research Program. Percy is especially interested in working on the evaluation of care in cancer patients, especially in applying technology and therapies in a timely manner to eliminate cancer in the patient. His research will focus on the effects of delays in care across the cancer continuum, especially in the interval from diagnosis to the end of treatment. Specific areas of research will include factors related to delays in access to the health system (health insurance, race, gender, minority, etc.); determining an optimal window of opportunity (time) to undergo cancer treatments; and whether delaying the administration of treatment beyond this window affects the survival of cancer patients.

Michael T. Halpern, MD, PhD, MPH
michael.halpern@nih.gov

Michael T. Halpern, MD, PhD, MPH is a Medical Officer in the Healthcare Delivery Research Program of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Halpern's expertise is in health services and health outcomes research, epidemiology, and data science, focused on access to care, quality of care, health equity, treatment patterns, health economics, and patient outcomes. At NCI, Dr. Halpern's responsibilities include leading the NCI Patterns of Care study to evaluate dissemination of state-of-the-art cancer therapy and diagnostics into community oncology practice and examine patient-, provider-, and system-level factors associated with cancer care. He also coordinates the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) Experience with Cancer Supplement working group and serves as editor of the Cancer Treatment section of the NCI Cancer Trends Progress Report.

Dr. Halpern received his MD and PhD through the University of Michigan's Medical Scientist Training Program; he also received an MPH in Epidemiology at the University of Michigan. He currently serves on the NCI Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program Scientific Education Committee; the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer's Quality Integration Committee; and the editorial board of the American Journal of Public Health.

Yasmine Mian, BS
yasmine.mian@nih.gov

Yasmine Mian, BS, is a Science Writer within the Healthcare Delivery Research Program (HDRP). Yasmine's primary role within HDRP includes creating scientific content for internal and external research communities. Yasmine has direct research experience and has written different types of scientific reports as well as articles geared towards a lay audience. Prior to her current position, She led a collaborative research project examining the gene regulatory networks governing human pancreatic cell development and function for several principal investigators within her postbaccalaureate appointment in NCI's Cancer Research Training Award Fellowship (2019 to 2022). While here, she disseminated research findings by writing detailed project reports on research progress and presented bi-annually for her colleagues.

Yasmine is a Cum Laude graduate, earning a BS in Molecular Bioscience and Biotechnology from Arizona State University. Outside of work, she enjoys reading, stargazing, and taking art/cooking classes.

Michelle Mollica, PhD, MPH, RN, OCN
mollicama@mail.nih.gov

Michelle Mollica, PhD, MPH, RN, OCN, serves as deputy director of the NCI Office of Cancer Survivorship. In this role, Dr. Mollica is responsible for developing, supporting, and promoting research efforts focused on cancer survivorship. Dr. Mollica also holds a secondary appointment as a program director in the Outcomes Research Branch (ORB) of the Healthcare Delivery Research Program, where she manages a research portfolio of grants focused on cancer survivorship and healthcare delivery across the lifecourse, from childhood through older adulthood. Dr. Mollica serves as scientific lead for several recent funding opportunity announcements focused on specific aspects of survivorship care.

With an enduring interest in improving care for those impacted by cancer, Michelle explores the intersection of survivorship and healthcare delivery, including the transition into post-treatment survivorship, models of survivorship care, integration of oncology and non-oncology providers in survivorship care, patient experiences, and informal cancer caregiving.

Michelle holds a PhD in Nursing Science, an MPH in Community Health and Health Behavior, and an MSN in Nursing Education. Previously, Michelle was an NCI Cancer Prevention Fellow and worked clinically as an oncology nurse.

Gila Neta, PhD, MPP
gila.neta@nih.gov

Gila Neta, PhD, MPP is an epidemiologist and program director for Implementation Science in the Office of the Director in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Neta serves as the NCI scientific lead for the trans-NIH funding announcements in Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health. She also leads the Global Implementation Science for Equitable Cancer Control initiative and develops research and training activities related to implementation science across the NCI and National Institutes of Health. Dr. Neta is Co-Chair of the NIH-sponsored Annual Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation. She also chairs the NIH D&I working group, a trans-NIH initiative providing leadership and vision for implementation science across the NIH. She has a secondary appointment within the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program and the NCI Center for Global Health. Dr. Neta received her Master of Public Policy degree at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001, and her Doctorate in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2009.

Sallie J. Weaver, PhD, MHS
sallie.weaver@nih.gov

Sallie J. Weaver, PhD, MHS, is a Senior Scientist and Program Director in the Health Systems and Interventions Research Branch (HSIRB) at the National Cancer Institute. Sallie manages and conducts research focused on organizational factors that influence clinical team performance, and interventions designed to optimize patient safety, care quality, and coordination within and across health system boundaries. She co-directs the NCI Healthcare Teams & Teamwork Processes in Cancer Care Delivery initiative that aims to improve the outcomes and experiences of people facing cancer through research on teaming in cancer care and translation of evidence-based team performance and care coordination interventions into practice. Sallie's interests also include research addressing disparities in care quality and access. She also currently supports the NCI Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences Rural Cancer Control Research initiatives.