Graham A. Colditz, M.D., Dr.P.H., has been named the Niess-Gain Professor and associate director of Prevention and Control at the Siteman Cancer Center.
He will have overall responsibility for overseeing research, education and community outreach in cancer prevention sponsored by the center.
“To recruit someone of Dr. Colditz’s stature is a tremendous opportunity,” said Timothy J. Eberlein, M.D., director of the Siteman Cancer Center. “He is one of the foremost leaders in his field, and people gravitate to him and to his vision. We already have a comprehensive prevention and control program, but now we have the opportunity to become the best in the world. This is a highly significant milestone in the evolution of the Siteman Cancer Center.”
Colditz is a newly elected member of the Institute of Medicine, a highly prestigious independent body that advises the U.S. government on many issues affecting public health. For the past 23 years, he has been at Harvard University where he was director of the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention and leader of the Cancer Epidemiology Program at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.
“I see my new position as a chance to go beyond the work I’ve been doing to engage in an even more active translation of research into practice,” Colditz said. “We can implement prevention strategies that work with clinicians, that work at the community level and that work with individuals. We can have an impact on the entire community and the region as a whole.”
Colditz points to a variety of research that has shown the value of cancer prevention: routine colon cancer screening can halve the death rate from colon cancer, medications such as tamoxifen can reduce breast cancer incidence and a vaccine is now available to prevent cervical cancer.
“The Prevention and Control Program creates a complement between discoveries in biological science and effective interventions,” Colditz said. “Siteman has enormous strength in basic science research and in understanding disease processes. The challenge is to add ways to identify cancer risks — both for individuals and within whole communities — and to change behavior to lower risk and improve people’s lives.”
Colditz also was professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and professor of epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health. Born in Sydney, Australia, he earned an undergraduate degree in pathology and a medical degree from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. He also earned a doctorate of public health from Harvard.
After completing his doctoral program, he joined the faculty at the Channing Laboratory in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. For the past seven years, he has been principal investigator of the Nurses Health Study, which is among the largest investigations into the risk factors for major chronic diseases in women.