Mara Epstein

Background

About Mara Epstein

I am currently a co-leader of the Cancer Population Health Sciences Program and an inaugural chair of the Cancer Screening Research Committee of the UMass Cancer Center. As an experienced cancer epidemiologist, my research interests focus on hematological cancers, and on developing methods to facilitate the use of large electronic health datasets for cancer epidemiology studies. My research also focuses on cancer prevention and survival, and the role of multimorbidity in cancer care for older adults. I have a strong background in epidemiologic methods and biostatistics, and expertise in the analysis of survey, registry, electronic health record (EHR), and insurance claims-based datasets, including data from the NCI’s SEER Program, SEER-Medicare, and the Health Care Systems Research Network (HCSRN) Virtual Data Warehouse. I have expertise in developing validated algorithms using EHR and health claims data to identify cancer-related outcomes by integrating diagnosis, procedure, and treatment codes. My work on cancer algorithms has been funded by a KL2 training grant from the UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science, R03 and R21 awards from NCI, and a grant awarded by the FDA Sentinel Initiative.