Fang Zhang
Research/Areas of Interest
My researchexpertise is nutrition and cancer epidemiology. Myearlier research centeredon the evaluation of gene-environment interventions in association with the risk of cancer –how lifestyle behaviors interact with genetic/epigeneticfactors (e.g. genetic polymorphisms, DNA methylation) influencing the risk of cancer. In recent years, I assembled an interdisciplinary team of researchers and developed a focused research on the role of nutrition in cancer prevention and controlin three major areas. The first area is to improve our understanding on cancer survivors' dietary intake, the long-term impact of cancer treatment on survivors' diet, and the relationships between diet, chronic health conditions, quality of life, and survival through the conduct of observational studies. The second area is translational, applyingresearch findings tothe design, conduct, and evaluation of dietary interventions and dissemination of evidence-based nutrition recommendations to cancer survivors,for improving survivors' long-term health outcomes. The third area is at the policy level, focusing on identifying effective nutrition policies for cancer prevention, by developing population-based models to assess the effectiveness, cost, and cost-effectiveness of implementing nationwide nutrition policies on reducing cancer burden in the United States.
Education
- PhD, Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health Epidemiology, New York, United States, 2007
- MD, Fudan University Shanghai Medical College Preventive Medicine, Shanghai, China, 1996
Biography
After joining Tufts University, She has expanded her research to nutrition and cancer survivorship. In the past few years, she has led pioneer studies investigating patterns of weight gain during and after cancer treatment and associated risk factors such as dietary intake and levels of energy expenditure in pediatric survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common cancer diagnosed in children. An interdisciplinary team lead by Dr. Zhang has recently completed the development of a web- and mobile-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 NIH, she is currently 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 US have poor diet quality, she is leading a PCORI project to build partnerships with key stakeholders in leading 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 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 cancer outcomes in the US.
Dr. Zhang received her PhD with distinction in Epidemiology from Columbia University. She directs the course on epidemiology methods for graduate students at Friedman School and School of Medicine and is a recipient of the Eileen O'Neil Citation for Excellence in Teaching. She is also the inaugural recipient of the Miriam E. Nelson Tisch Faculty Fellow from Tufts University.