Featured Grantees
The researchers highlighted below have been awarded at least one Behavioral Research Program-funded NIH grant. Read on to learn about their experiences as grantees.
Note: The views expressed here are those of the grantees only and do not represent any official position of the National Cancer Institute.
Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch
The "ah-ha" moment that I repeatedly experience is the importance of interpersonal relations in determining health behavior. Direct personal contacts with change agents, opinion leaders, and peers have been an essential aspect of my successful cancer prevention interventions and, more recently, relationships within organizational contexts, especially as influenced by policy, have emerged as influential for improving individuals' prevention practices.”
Navigating the complexity of health care and insurance is overwhelming for many cancer patients. Patients have to become their own advocates, while dealing with the health effects and stress of a cancer diagnosis. This can be particularly hard for adolescent and young adult cancer patients, who typically have little experience with insurance complexities prior to diagnosis.”
I have always been interested in how families adapt to and manage serious illness. My goal is to help patients and family members cope better and engage in better self-care.”
Darren M. Mays, Ph.D., M.P.H.
- Georgetown University
My background as a public health scientist has inspired me to conduct research that is aimed for population-level impact by focusing on developing effective cancer prevention communication messaging. Some of the most common risk behaviors that are linked with cancer, like tobacco use, sun exposure, and indoor tanning, tend to develop at an early age but are highly preventable. I study how to promote cancer preventive behaviors by designing communication messages that resonate with young people and motivate healthy choices.”
Xiaoli Nan, Ph.D.
- University of Maryland, College Park
My research suggests that people are both highly resistant and susceptible to persuasion. Science-informed persuasive strategies hold the key to developing cost-effective, ethical interventions for health behavior change”
Pallav Pokhrel
- University of Hawaii at Manoa
The advent of e-cigarettes has marked an epoch in the history of smoking-their impact on public health needs to be studied and studied clear-headedly.”
Brian A. Primack, M.D., Ph.D.
- University of Pittsburgh
As a teacher and a student of social sciences (and an English literature major in college), I realized how important things like communication and interpretation are in all areas of human interaction and behavior. Then, when I became a physician, I realized how powerful these tools could be for prevention and treatment of disease.”
Megha Ramaswamy, Ph.D., M.P.H.
- University of Kansas School of Medicine
Looking back, it was my early curiosity about inequality (kindled by a childhood in the Deep South and bedtime discussions with my dad about racism and politics) that ultimately motivated me as an adult to tackle the health disparities that affect marginalized women and men.”
Tobacco Control Research Branch
After growing up in rural Kentucky, I moved to California and was struck by the stark geographic disparity in tobacco control policies, and became passionate about closing the gap in rural, southern states.”
As a Peace Corps Volunteer many years ago, I served in two vastly different countries: the Solomon Islands and Kazakhstan. By living in these two disparate places I became keenly aware of how place affects health - through culture, environmental conditions, and policies. I have carried these concepts with me into my research career, trying to understand ways that the social and policy environments affect health and health disparities.”
I am passionate about transdisciplinary research to enhance our understanding about how the brain supports or constrains changes in habitual behaviors that contribute to cancer risk.”
Erin A. McClure, Ph.D.
- Medical University of South Carolina
Quitting smoking will never be easy, but I hope my work will help to maximize the likelihood that an individual will successfully quit the first time.”
Ritesh I. Mistry, Ph.D.
- University of Michigan
Being an immigrant, early on it seemed apparent to me that the country a person lives in and who they live with have profound impacts on their life. The mission of my career is to study how these contexts impact cancer risk behaviors.”
Claire A. Spears, Ph.D.
- Georgia State University
Practicing mindfulness has made a real difference in my life. Unfortunately, most of the research on mindfulness has not included very diverse populations, and I am committed to making mindfulness training more widely available to people from all walks of life. Using mobile technology could be one way to provide mindfulness training to low-income smokers who are interested in quitting smoking.”
Kathryn L. Taylor, Ph.D.
- Georgetown University Medical Center - Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center
As a behavioral scientist in the field of cancer prevention and control, it is very exciting to have the opportunity to test cessation interventions in a setting with the potential to reach thousands of older adults who have struggled with smoking their entire lives.”
Olivia A. Wackowski, Ph.D., M.P.H.
- Rutgers University - School of Public Health and Cancer Institute of New Jersey
As a college student I remember being moved and inspired by the new, innovative and hard-hitting visuals and messages from the first wave of the national anti-smoking "Truth" campaign - I knew then that public health and tobacco control was something I wanted to focus on and be a part of. ”
Basic Biobehavioral and Psychological Sciences Branch
Judith E. Carroll, Ph.D.
- University of California - Los Angeles
I was first motivated to work in biobehavioral research as an undergraduate student when I heard about research that demonstrated a significant impact of our thoughts and behaviors on our physical health and disease risk. I then realized I had an innate curiosity for understanding the basic biological mechanisms that connect the mind and body.”
Julienne E. Bower, Ph.D.
- University of California - Los Angeles
Understanding the relationship of biological aging with cognitive and physical health outcomes, and the role of modifiable behavioral factors, has implications for future interventions designed to mitigate morbidity associated with these biomarker risk profiles in breast cancer patients.”
Based on my personal experience as a patient, I decided to expand my research from radiology to pathology to turn the microscope back on ourselves (the physicians), and to see how we can improve diagnostic accuracy and patient outcomes.”
Chanita A. Hughes-Halbert, Ph.D.
- Medical University of South Carolina - Hollings Cancer Center
I dedicated my career to addressing cancer health disparities through a transdisciplinary research program in minority health. The inequality that still exists in cancer outcomes continues to reinforce my dedication.”
Michael R. Irwin, M.D.
- University of California - Los Angeles
The Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA has discovered that sleep and health are intimately inter-connected: insomnia induces adverse trajectories of disease risk, activates inflammatory biology, and accelerates cellular aging. In turn, interventional strategies from behavioral to mind-body treatments effectively target sleep problems and reverse the course of biological mechanisms of disease risk, aging, and possibly cancer, which together optimize healthspan.”
We know from the extant literature on relationships and health that marriage is health-protective. But how couples interact on a day-to-day basis and across years is so important.”
I have ... strived to find ways to help patients and family leverage their relationships to address illness-related challenges together in ways that benefit them as individuals and as a couple, and help them derive meaning from the experience”
The most profound influence on my work was my mentor, Dr Jane Weeks, who taught me that doing research, and working with the smartest, most interesting, most fun people, can be one of the great joys of life.”
I began my career as a family doctor working in neighborhood health centers in underserved communities. The turning point in my career from clinician to clinician researcher occurred on a job interview in an internal medicine department at a teaching hospital caring for a large population of older individuals.”
The explosion of genetic information into the lives of patients and populations requires that we find tools that will translate genomics to better patient experiences in decision-making, treatment, quality of life, and outcomes. To achieve this goal, we must nucleate interdisciplinary teams that include geneticists, population scientists, behavioral scientists, oncologists, and others to develop and implement comprehensive and impactful patient tools.”
Health Behaviors Research Branch
Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, Ph.D., R.D.
- University of Alabama at Birmingham
I am motivated daily by the participants in our studies who continually teach me new things and who provide inspiration.”
I first became interested in how neighborhood green spaces may improve health through my work in New Zealand, where green spaces tend to be high quality and accessible. Now I live in Michigan, where Detroit is recovering from decades of disinvestment in its parks. While improvements have been made, neighborhoods remain where the city's parks renaissance has not reached. This study allows us to test how restoring parks to be vibrant green spaces may contribute to health in underserved communities.”
Dorothy W. Pekmezi, Ph.D.
- University of Alabama at Birmingham
The most profound influences on my research program have come from clinical encounters and qualitative research, in which patients/participants are often eager to eat healthier and exercise more but describe real barriers to accessing related programs/resources (costs, transportation, etc.) and desire encouragement and accountability.”
Andrew D. Ray
- Roswell Park Cancer Institute Corp
I always knew there was something special about my work, but it wasn't until I presented my findings to a neighboring University I realized how strong my pilot data really was.”
Yelena P. Wu, Ph.D.
- Huntsman Cancer Institute - University of Utah
Childhood ultraviolet radiation exposure and sunburns are key modifiable risk factors for development of skin cancers, such as melanoma, later in life. However, there are few skin cancer prevention programs targeting adolescents, including in schools, that focus on teen intentional tanning and sun protection behaviors.”