Graham A. Colditz, M.D., DrPH

Dr. Colditz is an epidemiologist and Associate Director for Prevention and Control at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri. He is the Niess-Gain Family Professor in Medicine, Department of Surgery, at Washington University School of Medicine. He served as principal investigator of the Nurses Health Study located at the Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, from 1999 to 2006. This cohort follows 121,700 U.S. women with questionnaire assessment of lifestyle factors and the use of biomarkers to assess risk of chronic diseases among women (reference: www.nurseshealthstudy.org). He continues to collaborate on this study and on studies based on tissue samples from participants with prior biopsies for benign breast disease to evaluate changes that predict future risk of breast cancer.

He has a major interest in the etiology and prevention of cancer working with numerous state and national organizations to translate research findings from ongoing studies into public health strategies for prevention. For 15 years, he taught the Cancer Prevention course at Harvard School of Public Health. His additional public health practice activities include collaborations through the Women, Infants & Children (WIC) program to improve diet assessment and nutrition education in the service delivery setting.

Dr. Colditz served in leadership roles within the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention from its founding until the fall of 2006. He led the development of the Centerís website, an interactive risk assessment tool that provides tailored messages on the prevention of cancer and other chronic diseases. Check out the Your Disease Risk tool.

In 2003, Dr. Colditz was the recipient of the American Cancer Society Sissy Hornung Clinical Research Professorship Award, and awarded the DeWitt S. Goodman Lectureship by the American Association of Cancer Research in 2003. Since 2004, he has been funded by the Breast Cancer Research Foundation to further evaluate risk factors for breast cancer and the potential for prevention. He is a Fellow of the Australian Faculty of Public Health Medicine, the Royal Australian College of Physicians, and a member of the Institute of Medicine.

Dr. Colditz comments regularly on cancer news items, placing them in context of known causes and strategies for prevention, on the Siteman Cancer Center's Cancer News in Context.