Bradley to join CU Cancer Center, Colorado School of Public Health
Cathy J. Bradley has been hired as the associate director for cancer prevention and control by the University of Colorado Cancer Center and the Colorado School of Public Health. Bradley currently is associate director at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Massey Cancer Center, chair of the university’s Department of Healthcare Policy and Research and interim chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Health.
Bradley will be a key member of the CU Cancer Center’s executive leadership team, as well as a professor in the Department of Health Systems, Management and Policy at Colorado School of Public Health, where she will focus on cancer prevention, cancer control, health policy, and outcomes research with emphasis on inter-disciplinary projects.
Cancer prevention includes cancer screening, early detection programs, and interventions such as improving nutrition and increasing exercise. Cancer control science is designed to create or enhance interventions that will reduce cancer risk, reduce cancer mortality, and improve quality of life for cancer survivors. Cancer control research also includes studies to improve health care delivery systems as well as studies to inform and shape health policy to ease the burden of cancer at a population level.
As a health economist specializing in cancer, much of Bradley’s recent work focuses on finding and fixing gaps in cancer care affecting underserved and minority populations. She also has pioneered research addressing cancer and its effect on employment. Bradley is an accomplished researcher with more than 100 articles published in peer-reviewed journals and has been continuously funded for the past 18 years. She has ongoing research currently funded by the National Cancer Institute, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Komen Foundation and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
CU Cancer Center is the hub of cancer research in the state of Colorado. As associate director for prevention and control, Bradley will play a lead role in identifying, developing and overseeing cross-disciplinary research, multi-institutional research collaboration and shared services to support cancer prevention and control research programs across the state of Colorado.
Bradley will provide leadership and mentorship to CU Cancer Center investigators carrying out public health research and service programs in cancer prevention and control. Those programs include:
- Colorado Colorectal Screening Program, a statewide program to increase colorectal cancer screening of the medically underserved.
- Colorado Generations helps primary care physicians identify which of their patients may need increased surveillance or cancer genetic testing for colon or breast cancers.
- Colorado Patient Navigator Training educates patient navigators on the most effective ways to reduce barriers in cancer screening, cancer treatments and health care, in general.
- Specialized Program of Research Excellence in Lung Cancer research to identify biomarkers for lung cancer, the leading cancer killer of men and women.
- The development of human clinical trials for chemopreventive nutrients now being studied in animal models at the CU Cancer Center.
Bradley also will direct a training program in cancer prevention and control research science to assist in the education of the next generation of cancer researchers.
Bradley also received a secondary appointment to the University of Colorado School of Medicine in the Department of Medicine’s Division of Medical Oncology.