PREVENTIVE ONCOLOGY ACADEMIC AWARD

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DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from Application) To prevent cancer, one must have identified the critical exposure. Increasing evidence suggest that childhood and adolescence are a particularly vulnerable period for mutagenic exposures. Furthermore, to motivate behavior change, one must effectively communicate risk. The specific research aims of this proposal are therefore to:1) Examine the relation between adolescent exposures and the subsequent development of adult malignancies. 2) To construct a model of overall cancer incidence and mortality that can be used to: a) define the attributable risk of each exposure, comparing adolescent versus adult exposures. b) define interactions between exposures (how much worse is one's risk of cancer if one never eats fruits or vegetables and is a heavy drinker?). c)estimate the efficacy of a cancer prevention intervention at both the individual and societal level. These objectives will be accomplished using the data collected by the Nurses' Health Study, a prospective cohort of 121,700 women prospectively followed since 1976. Extensive, validated data have been collected every two years on significant exposures, diet and incidence of disease. Follow-up of the initial cohort as of 1990 was over 91 percent.As a recipient of a Preventive Oncology Academic Award, I would seek more didactic training in the methods of epidemiology, biostatistics and risk modification at the Harvard School of Public Health to further refine my work in cancer prevention.