Collaborative Cancer Health Economics Research Workshop (Speaker Bios)

Anirban Basu is a Professor of Health Economics and the Stergachis Family Endowed Director of The CHOICE Institute at the University of Washington, Seattle. He holds joint appointments with the Department of Health Systems and Population Health and the Department of Economics at UW, is a Research Associate at the US National Bureau of Economic Research, and an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association. His work sits at the intersection of microeconomics, statistics, and health policy. His research focuses on understanding the economic value of health care through scientific disciplines of applied economic theory, comparative and cost-effectiveness analyses, causal inference methods, program evaluation, and outcomes research. He served on the Second Panel on Cost-effectiveness Analysis in Health and Medicine and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for Value in Health Journal. He is a past recipient of the ISPOR Methodology Awards and the Bernie O’Brien New Investigator Award. He received his master's in Biostatistics from UNC-Chapel Hill and a PhD in Public Policy Studies from the University of Chicago. Further details at www.anirbanbasu.org

Oliver studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, completed his PhD at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in London and did post-docs at the Salk Institute, and the Ludwig Institute, San Diego. He was on faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University, Henry Ford Hospital and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center where he also served as director of basic research for the Brain Tumor Center. His work focused on EGFR signaling and novel platinum compounds in glioblastoma.

In 2010, he became MD Anderson’s Vice President for Global Academic Programs supporting a network of 35 Sister Institutions in 22 countries and fostered cancer research and training across the globe. In 2011, he was also appointed Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, stewarded MD Anderson’s education mission and accreditation, and oversaw 300 people, who supported 1,700 faculty and more than 2,000 trainees and students. In 2018 he became COO at the ECHO Institute at the University of New Mexico, and helped democratize scarce expert knowledge to improve services to the underserved in healthcare, education and beyond.

In 2020 Oliver joined the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Cancer Training which supports the goal of training cancer researchers for the 21st century.

Cathy J. Bradley, Ph.D., is the Dean of the Colorado School of Public Health and the Deputy Director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center. She holds the Paul Bunn Chair in Cancer Research. Prior to joining the University of Colorado, she was the founding Chair of the Department of Healthcare Policy and Research, Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Bradley is a health economist and received her Ph.D. and M.P.A. from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Dr. Bradley’s research is at the intersection of labor supply, health, and insurance; health disparities; and the costs and outcomes of treatment. Her research explains how when faced with a serious and expensive to treat illness such as cancer, many workers will remain employed to keep employer-based health insurance, despite needs for treatment and convalescence. Dr. Bradley’s research informs policies that reduce disparate outcomes and financial burden among people who must make stark choices. In addition, her pioneering research in health equity resulted in an examination of health care delivery for underrepresented people. Dr. Bradley have served on the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s National Cancer Policy Forum and formerly served on the National Advisory Committee to the Agency for Healthcare Quality & Research. She currently serves on the Methodology Committee for the Patient-centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). She has received numerous awards and honors including the Women in Science, Dentistry, and Medicine Professional Achievement Award in Leadership and maintains an active research portfolio of NIH grant and foundation grants.

Kevin Callison is an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. He also has appointments in the Department of Economics and the Murphy Institute for Political Economy at Tulane. His research primarily focuses on issues related to the fields of health economics and policy evaluation. Current projects include an NCI-funded study of the effects of paid sick leave on cancer screening and prevention, an evaluation of the impact of Louisiana's Medicaid expansion on cancer care and outcomes for cancer patients, and analyses of the financial burden associated with cancer and its implications for health equity.

Dr. Janet de Moor 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-related financial hardship, employment outcomes after cancer, 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.

Michael Halpern 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 Assurance and Data Committee; and the editorial board of the American Journal of Public Health.

Dr. Keating’s research examines provider, patient, and health system factors that influence the delivery of high-quality care for individuals with cancer. She is is currently Clinical Lead of the Evaluation Team for the CMS Oncology Care Model, an alternate payment and delivery model for oncology practices administering chemotherapy. In other work, she is studying the impact of financial integration of oncology practices into systems and hospitals and its impact on care delivery. In ongoing work, she is assessing the reliability and consistency of quality and equity measurement across oncology practices caring for individuals with cancer. Previous work has examined patient, physician, and health system factors contributing to the variations in the intensity of end-of-life care for individuals with advanced cancer. She serves as Program Leader of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Cancer Care Delivery Research Program and she co-leads a T32 training grant, Training in Oncology Population Sciences, and she co-leads a T32 training grant, Training in Oncology Population Sciences.

Dr. Keating received her MD degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, and her MPH degree from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. In 2022, she was awarded the John M. Eisenberg Award for Career Achievement in Research by the Society of General Internal Medicine. She is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. Dr. Keating has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health as principal investigator for more than twenty years. She currently serves as an Associate Editor at the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Geriatric Oncology and Annals of Internal Medicine, and a she is member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Center Senior Oncology Guideline Panel.

Ryan Nipp, M.D., MPH, is a gastrointestinal oncologist and cancer outcomes researcher at OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center. He completed an internal medicine residency at Duke University and oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. His research focuses on optimizing the care delivered to patients with cancer. Specifically, his research platform consists of studies interfacing between palliative care, geriatric oncology and health services research.

Dr. Nipp’s goal is to improve the quality of life and care for patients with cancer and their family and he is interested in developing models of healthcare delivery to improve patients’ quality of life, address their symptom burden and promote patient-centered decision-making.

Eberechukwu Onukwugha, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Practice, Sciences, and Health Outcomes Research and is the Executive Director of Pharmaceutical Research Computing at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. She is also a member of the Population Science program at the University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center. She received a Bachelor of Arts in economics and French from the University at Albany, State University of New York, a Master of Science in agricultural and applied economics as well as a Doctor of Philosophy in economics (concentration: econometrics) from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech).
Since 2006, Dr. Onukwugha has conducted oncology health services research using real-world data (e.g., cancer registry data, administrative data, patient surveys). She uses linked data to investigate the role of contextual (e.g., hospital, physician, and environmental/geographic) and individual-level factors in explaining individual health outcomes and processes of care, for example, disease progression, physician visits, treatment receipt, and economic burden of cancer. Her research also considers heterogeneity (i.e., measurable differences across patient subgroups) in patient health behaviors, health outcomes, and costs of care with a focus on racial and ethnic differences.
Dr. Onukwugha has authored over 120 peer-reviewed articles in health economics and outcomes research. Her research has been published in journals such as Cancer, Ethnicity & Disease, JCO: Clinical Cancer Informatics, PharmacoEconomics, Neurology, Value in Health, Journal of Hospital Medicine, and Journal of Oncology Practice.

Dr. Park is a Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine at MGH/Harvard Medical School. A clinical health psychologist and behavioral scientist, she founded the Health Promotion and Resiliency Intervention Research Center. HPRIR’s mission is to develop, assess, implement, and disseminate evidence-based interventions focused on resiliency, health-promotion, illness prevention and survivorship, through research, training, and advocacy. She is the Associate Director of Survivorship and Psychosocial Services for the MGH Cancer Center. The primary focus of her research is on the integration and implementation of behavioral interventions into clinical care, healthcare systems and communities. Her research is dedicated to furthering the development and implementation of accessible, digital interventions for all cancer patients and survivors. She co-chairs the ECOG-ACRIN Health Promotion Subcommittee within the Cancer Control and Survivorship Committee. She is a recipient of an NCI K24 to promote mentoring clinician scientists to develop skills to conduct behavioral trials in cancer prevention, treatment and survivorship. She is conducting two NCI-funded effectiveness-implementation trials integrating telehealth-delivered tobacco treatments into patients’ care during cancer screening and at the time of a cancer diagnosis. She is also conducting and NCI-funded R01 trial to assess the effectiveness of a synchronous vs asynchronous healthcare navigation intervention for cancer survivors as well as an NCI-funded U01 trial to enhance the racial and ethnic diversity representation in cancer clinical trials. She is conducting an NCI funded R21 to assess the feasibility and acceptability of a survivor/caregiver resiliency intervention and exploring emotional well being and health care utilization outcomes.

Maria Pisu, PhD, is a Professor in the Division of Preventive Medicine of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Dr. Pisu is a health economist whose research focuses on cancer outcomes and health services research across diverse and older populations. Her studies address financial hardship of cancer and its treatment, disparities in access and utilization of recommended health care services, and disparities in recruitment to cancer studies. Dr. Pisu currently leads the Emotional Well-Being and Economic Burden of Disease Research Network (EMOT-ECON.org). In addition, Dr. Pisu has expertise in economic evaluation of interventions beneficial to the health of cancer survivors, such as behavioral and supportive care interventions. She received a PhD in Economics from the Pennsylvania State University and post-doctoral training from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Meredith B. Rosenthal, Ph.D. is the C. Boyden Gray Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Rosenthal received her Ph.D. in health policy at Harvard University in 1998. Her research examines the design and impact of market-oriented health policy mechanisms, with a particular focus on the use of financial incentives to alter consumer and provider behavior. Past projects focused on the design and impacts of pay for performance, high-deductible and tiered network health plans, and payer-sponsored patient centered medical homes. Dr. Rosenthal’s recent research examines the structure and performance of health systems across the U.S., vertical integration of physician practices, and market factors driving cancer drug pricing trends. Dr. Rosenthal is a member of the Massachusetts Center for Health Information and Analysis oversight commission. Dr. Rosenthal received her B.A in International Relations from Brown University in 1990 and her Ph.D. in Health Policy from Harvard University in 1998. Dr. Rosenthal was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2014.

Ya-Chen Tina Shih, Ph.D., is Director of Program in Cancer Health Economics Research, UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and Professor of Health Economics at Department of Radiation Oncology, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University and had been on faculty at University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, University of Chicago, and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center prior to joining UCLA.

Dr. Shih applies methods of health economics, health services research, and pharmacoeconomics in cancer research. She has over 280 publications and has received funding from the NCI on topics related to cancer health economics research, including research that examines the costs, outcomes, and utilization patterns of new oncologic technology for cancer treatment, evaluates economic implications of targeted oral anticancer medications drugs, and develops novel statistical methods to estimate and project cost trajectories of cancer care. Other research includes the assessment of the cost-effectiveness of cancer screening strategies and behavioral interventions.

Dr. Shih is a member of the American Cancer Society Guidelines Development Workgroup, an associate editor of Journal of the National Cancer Institute and is on the editorial board of Value in Health, PharmacoEconomics, and JCO -- Oncology Practice.

Dr. Natasha K. Stout recently joined the Surveillance Research Program in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute. Natasha’s research combines evidence from real-world electronic health data such as claims data with the methodology of rigorous computer simulation modeling to address questions about the value and downstream consequences of health policies across the cancer spectrum. At NCI, she is working to expand the use of decision modeling methods to promote health and reduce the burden of cancer. This fall she will become the overall Project Scientist for the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET), a consortium of independent modeling teams using statistical simulation methods to address unresolved policy questions across the cancer control continuum.

Before joining NCI, Natasha was Associate Professor of Population Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. She was a longtime CISNET grantee as well as a member of the NCI-sponsored Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium. With CISNET and BCSC colleagues, she has conducted numerous comparative and cost-effectiveness studies of breast cancer screening programs that have influenced US screening policy.

She received her BA in Mathematics from Oberlin College and her MSIE in Operations Research and Decision Science and PhD in Population Health Sciences both from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Prior to graduate school, Natasha worked at Epic Systems, a firm that develops healthcare information software. She is a Past President of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

Dr. Unger is Associate Professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and a Senior Health Services Researcher and Biostatistician with the SWOG Cancer Research Group. He has extensive experience in clinical trial design, health disparities, health outcomes research, and quality of life and patient reported outcomes. He has been the lead statistician on multiple high profile randomized clinical trials examining the efficacy of interventions to control symptoms related to cancer and its treatment. Alongside his clinical trial research focus, he is a recognized leader in the area of barriers and disparities in access to clinical trials, as well as in the clinical, scientific, and population impact of clinical trials as a research process. He is an expert in multi-trial or multi-database linkage studies, and has lead many “big data” studies using the SWOG clinical trial database in combination with external secondary data sources such as Medicare claims that have generated important findings with impacts on policy.

Dr. Vanness is a Professor of Health Policy and Administration and Professor of Demography at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, where he directs the Ph.D. program in Health Policy and Administration. He received his doctorate in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000 and has served on the faculty of the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health prior to joining Penn State in 2018. A substantial proportion of his work has involved the development and application of methods that quantify uncertainty in clinical and economic evidence and apply decision criteria based on opportunity costs and individual and societal preferences for health outcomes. He has applied these methods in the context of randomized controlled trials, administrative and health records observational studies and decision modeling based on evidence synthesis. Dr. Vanness has served as a bridge between clinical, social and public health intervention scientists working together to improve medical decision-making and delivery of interventions to improve outcomes, reduce disparities and control costs in cancer and many other health conditions.

Dr. Frank Wharam is a general internist and health policy researcher. He studies the impact of national and state policies on the health of large populations, chronically ill patients, and vulnerable subgroups. His research often examines effects of health insurance benefit designs such as value-based, consumer-directed (CDHPs), and high-deductible health plans (HDHPs). He has expertise in rigorous quasi-experiment research designs, causal inference in observational data, and large claims data analyses. His cancer research has examined how large-scale population interventions, including USPSTF guidelines changes, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), breast density notification laws, and health insurance designs affect people with cancer.

Nastaran (Nas) Zahir, Ph.D. is Director of the Cancer Training Branch in the Center for Cancer Training where she oversees the extramural research fellowships, training, and career development programs funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Zahir strives to foster collaborative team science and support cancer education, outreach, and advocacy activities spanning the cancer research continuum. Prior to joining the Center for Cancer Training in 2021, Dr. Zahir served as Associate Director at the NCI Division of Cancer Biology where she coordinated interdisciplinary programs that integrate physical sciences perspectives in cancer research. Dr. Zahir joined the NCI in 2009 as a program director and project scientist in the Office of Physical Sciences-Oncology. Dr. Zahir's research experience was in the areas of tissue engineering at the NIH for her postdoc, breast cancer mechanobiology at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Bioengineering for her PhD, and plasma physics and radiation biology at the University of California, Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering.