This Friedman Seminar features Fang Fang Zhang, MD, PhD, assistant professor, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, presenting “Nutrition and Weight Management in Cancer Survivors.”
Abstract
Bio
Dr. Zhang is a cancer epidemiologist conducting population-based studies to investigate the role of nutrition in cancer prevention and control. In the past few years, she has led pioneer studies investigating patterns of weight gain during and after cancer treatment and associated risk factors in childhood cancer survivors. An interdisciplinary team lead by Dr. Zhang has completed the development of a web-based nutrition intervention program to help parents transition family into healthy eating and active living as soon as the child completes early stage of cancer treatment. With funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), she is collaborating with colleagues at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital to evaluate dietary intake in adult survivors of childhood cancer and its associations with treatment exposure, chronic health conditions, and quality of life. Following her recent study that identified adult cancer survivors in the United States have poor diet quality, she is leading a project supported by the Patient Center Outcome Research Institute (PCORI) to build partnerships with cancer survivors, health care providers, policy makers, and payers in learning about the complex web of factors that influence the dietary intake patterns of cancer survivors. The optimal strategies to improve diet and reduce cancer are not clear. While various individual-level behavior change approaches can be effective for some people, overall benefits and long-term adherence may be modest and overall benefits poorly sustained. In contrast, population strategies can be more powerful and achieve broader impact. Supported by the NIH, Dr. Zhang is leading a multidisciplinary R01 project to evaluate the effectiveness, cost, and cost-effectiveness of population-based dietary interventions at the national level on reducing the cancer burden in the United Sates.