Bio
I am an assistant professor in pediatric oncology with a focus on cancer survivorship and community-engaged research. I completed fellowship in pediatric hematology/oncology at Stanford and residency in internal medicine–pediatrics (med–peds) at CHOP and Penn. My clinical practice includes pediatric oncology with a focus on solid tumors and cancer survivorship, including care of adult survivors of childhood cancer. My academic interests include cancer survivorship, health equity, and patient-family-clinician communication. My training in public health, internal medicine–pediatrics, and pediatric oncology gives me a unique perspective on the challenges facing childhood cancer survivors as they age and transition from treatment to survivorship and from pediatric to adult focused care.
I lead the CoCOS (Collaborative Community Optimizing Survivorship) Lab, a team that leverages community-engaged research to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities among childhood cancer survivors and their families. Central to this work is our community–academic partnership with Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer Support Services (https://www.jacobsheart.org/), a nonprofit community-based organization supporting families of children with cancer in a 4-county, predominantly rural, low-income, and majority Hispanic/Latino region in the Salinas Valley (region includes Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito, and south Santa Clara counties). Our research is inspired by design thinking (a method of creative problem solving) and guided by community-based participatory research principles with bidirectional trust and collaboration at every level.
Our active grant-supported research projects involve rigorous qualitative methods and apply human-centered design principles to develop new programs (interventions, toolkits) that will be pilot tested and refined based on multi-stakeholder (community/academic) input, with the overall goal of improving childhood cancer survivors’ long-term health and engagement in recommended survivorship care.
