Cancer Prevention

Jamie Hensley, MHCM, CCRP, navigated booths where community health educators shared cancer prevention tips and screening guidelines, and outreach workers stacked giveaway boxes full of vegetables and food staples. 

The first student from the Department of Heath Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics to win an International Student Achievement Award was honored on November 19 by the University of Florida International Center.

A prestigious award of more than $850,000 from the National Cancer Institute will support Rahma Mkuu, PhD, as she builds her expertise in implementation science over the next five years while adressing cervical cancer screening disparities among women living with chronic conditions. Mkuu is an assistant professor and chronic disease researcher in the Department of Health Outcomes & Biomedical Informatics within the University of Florida’s College of Medicine.

The University of Florida Health Cancer Center co-hosted the inaugural Cancer Implementation Science Symposium over two days in June with Mount Kenya University, drawing researchers, faculty, policy advocates, and students.

Carma Bylund, Ph.D., and Stephanie Staras, Ph.D., received a five-year, $2.5-million grant to focus on the implementation of community oncology strategies to promote clinical trial enrollment…

UF Health Cancer Center members Carma Bylund, Ph.D., a professor in the department of health outcomes and biomedical informatics, and Susan Bluck, Ph.D., a lifespan developmental psychologist and gerontologist in the UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ department of psychology, recently co-hosted a summit at UF that delved into the science of how people care for one another, particularly at the end of life.

Stephanie Staras, PhD, won the Principal Investigator award from the University of Florida Health Cancer Center for exceptional trial recruitment in 2023. She received the award in January at a ceremony at the Cade Museum in Gainesville, Florida. Staras is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair for Faculty Development in the Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics.

One of the project leaders for a new $1.5-million grant is Ramzi Salloum, Ph.D., from the College of Medicine’s Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics. Working with the UF Health Cancer Center, the project will provide North Florida with its first mobile mammography with leading-edge technology.

“Data envelopment analysis is a useful tool for assessing the relative efficiency of organizations that implement evidence-based programs in a way that is not possible with other analytic methods,” said Dr. Kathryn Pluta, University of Florida researcher and lead author.

Three researchers from Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics (HOBI) serve on the organizing team for the Florida Health Policy Leadership Academy within UF’s Bob Graham Center for Public Service. They also recently combined efforts to publish a study on secondhand smoke with surprisingly high exposure rates. The study…