2023 Fraumeni & Cullen Awards
Joseph F. Fraumeni, Jr., Distinguished Achievement Award
The Joseph F. Fraumeni, Jr., Distinguished Achievement Award is presented to an outstanding scientist in the area of preventive oncology, cancer control and/or cancer prevention. We are happy to announce the 2023 award will be presented to Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, PhD, RD during the Annual Meeting.
Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, PhD, RD is an outstanding candidate for the ASPO Joseph F. Fraumeni, Jr. Distinguished Achievement Award given her significant and long-term scientific contributions across the cancer continuum. A nutrition scientist by training, Dr. Demark-Wahnefried began her career studying weight gain among women with breast cancer and was one of the first to document sarcopenic obesity with chemotherapy (JCO 2001). She conducted proof-of-principal studies that promoted high-nutrient, low energy density diets combined with aerobic and resistance training to reverse adverse body composition change. Achieving success, Dr. Demark-Wahnefried then focused on interventions that were grounded in behavioral theory, home-based, scalable, and aimed at mitigating outcomes associated with accelerated aging among cancer survivors. Initially using tailored mailed print interventions with or without telephone counseling, the FRESH START and RENEW randomized controlled trials (RCT) achieved significant, reproducible, and durable improvements in dietary intake and physical activity, and functional decline in international and sizable (>500) samples of cancer survivors (JCO 2007, JAMA 2009, JCO 2012). Partnering with Cooperative Extension, Harvest for Health, a statewide, home-based, vegetable gardening intervention delivered by master gardeners paired with 381 older cancer survivors will soon yield findings aimed to enhance health of survivors residing in rural areas. Her AMPLIFY (AiM, Plan and act on LIFestYles) web-based, diet and exercise, weight loss RCT is recruiting survivors of obesity-related cancers. Along with RCTs in the presurgical setting and measuring effects on tumor proliferation have yielded ~350 peer-reviewed articles. She has led efforts to disseminate best practices for lifestyle behaviors among cancer survivors including several notable policy-related papers (CA Cancer J Clin 2012, 2018; Med Sci Sports Exerc, 2010; J Natl Compr Canc Netw 2020,2021; J Clin Oncol 2022). Dr. Demark-Wahnefried is devoted to service, chairing various committees including the National Cancer Policy Forum, the World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute of Cancer Research, and ASPO, where she served on several program planning committees, director-at-large, and president (2013-2015).
Joseph W. Cullen Memorial Award
The Joseph W. Cullen Memorial Award is to recognize an individuals distinguished achievement in continued national tobacco control efforts, through research, through the development of prevention and cessation programs with wide-reaching public health impact, or through public policy and advocacy initiatives. We are happy to announce the 2023 award will be presented to Vani Nath Simmons, PhD during the Annual Meeting.
Dr. Vani Simmons is a senior member of the Department of Health Outcomes and Behavior at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, and Professor of Oncologic Sciences and Psychology at the University of South Florida. Dr. Simmons co-directs Moffitt’s Tobacco Research and Intervention Program, a large multi-disciplinary team focused on tobacco control research. Dr. Simmons has dedicated her career to reducing health disparities by developing and validating innovative, participant-centered smoking cessation interventions. These studies include populations at high-risk for tobacco-related disparities, yet not well-represented in tobacco research, including young adults, pregnant/postpartum women, cancer patients/survivors, Spanish-language preferring individuals, and individuals who also vape. She recently led one of the largest smoking cessation trials for cancer patients while also leading NCI’s C3I Cancer Moonshot initiative at Moffitt. Her work with cancer patients has extended to electronic cigarette use and to understanding barriers and facilitators to low-dose computed tomography as a screening tool for high-risk smokers. Additionally, Dr. Simmons demonstrated strong efficacy for one of the few Spanish-language tobacco cessation interventions in a nation-wide trial. She also co-led the first trial to demonstrate that dual users of combustible and e-cigarettes benefit from smoking cessation assistance. Dr. Simmons has been continuously funded throughout her career by NIH and the Florida Biomedical Research Program.
Dr. Gomez has over 20 years of experience as an epidemiologist with research interests in the role of social determinants of health, including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, immigration status, sociocultural factors, and neighborhood contextual characteristics, on health outcomes. She is Director of the Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry, a part of the California Cancer Registry and the NCI Surveillance Epidemiology End Results (SEER) Program. She has contributed surveillance data regarding cancer incidence and outcome patterns and trends for distinct Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander and Hispanic ethnic groups, as well as cancer patterns by nativity status and neighborhood characteristics. She developed the California Neighborhoods Data System, a compilation of small-area level data on social and built environment characteristics and has used these data in more than a dozen funded studies to evaluate the impact of social and built neighborhood environment factors on disease outcomes. Her publications demonstrating the substantial heterogeneity in cancer patterns across Asian American groups are often cited as the reasons for the importance of disaggregating cancer data for this diverse population. In fact, it is because of Dr. Gomez’ efforts and advocacy that we have gained an appreciation of the substantial heterogeneity among Asians and Pacific Islanders. In addition, she coined the concept of “ethnic enclaves,” which refers to neighborhoods with high proportions of the racial/ethnic group of interest. Through the application of this concept, scientists can assess the role of racial/ethnic enclave neighborhoods as predictors of cancer risk and outcomes. Dr. Gomez’s work in neighborhood contextual research has inspired and motivated a new generation of cancer research and development of novel methodologic approaches for studies in neighborhoods and cancer.
Dr. Eissenberg began exploring methods to assess the effects of novel tobacco products in 1999, was the first to publish a clinical lab study of e-cigarette effects (Eissenberg, 2010), and the Center for the Study of Tobacco Products (CSTP) team at Virginia Commonwealth University, which Dr. Eissenberg co-directs, was the first to characterize the product characteristics, toxicant output, and nicotine delivery of JUUL e-cigarettes. Dr. Eissenberg’s significant achievements in national and international tobacco control are evidenced by 200+ publications in the past 8 years from members of the CSTP scientific team he leads. Over the past two decades, Dr. Eissenberg has been awarded over $50 million dollars in funds as principal investigator from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study tobacco products and has been funded continuously by NIH since 1997. He has nearly 300 publications, predominantly in the area of tobacco control, his h-index on Google scholar is 76, and he is recognized by Clarivate as a Highly Cited Researcher due to having multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% in Web of Science. Dr. Eissenberg is distinguished by his leadership in bringing together national and international scientists from chemistry, economics, engineering, medicine, public policy, public health, and psychology to generate high-impact and transformative transdisciplinary tobacco regulatory science that can impact federal policy on tobacco products. He has dedicated his career to facilitating safe and ethical research aimed at decreasing tobacco-caused death and disease as a past member of the FDA’s Tobacco Product Scientific Advisory Committee and of the DHHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections. Findings from his work are providing the scientific justification for several tobacco control regulatory policies under consideration including efforts to address menthol flavoring in e-liquids and regulating nicotine emissions from e-cigarette devices. In addition, he has been a generous educator who has mentored numerous junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students, 9 of whom have competed successfully for NIH F31 funding.
Lucile was the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in epidemiology in the United States, and in 1995 when she directed the Howard University Cancer Center she was the only African-American woman to lead any cancer institute. She is currently the Associate Director of Minority Health & Health Disparities Research, Senior Associate Dean for Community Outreach and Engagement, and Professor of Oncology at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center. Dr. Adams-Campbell has dedicated her career to studying cancer disparities experienced by African-Americans. Her research uses clinical trials, cancer epidemiology and etiology along with lifestyle interventions to elucidate the cancer risk in African-Americans and has led to over 200 peer-reviewed publications and international recognition as an expert in minority health and health disparities research.
Bo has unequivocally demonstrated an unyielding commitment to tobacco control efforts by enabling innovative research and spearheading public education, policy and advocacy initiatives. Her strong leadership, like Dr. Cullen’s, exemplifies a commitment to fostering collaboration among scientists, health care professionals, and public health advocates involved in the struggle against tobacco and tobacco-related diseases.
Health inequities are not new. However, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and recent death of George Floyd among many other people of color has brought the issues of systemic structural racism and discrimination and health inequity into the forefront of American consciousness. Communities of color, and people who are low income, rural, LGBTQ+, immigrants, and Indigenous, among others, face disproportionate and inequitable cancer burden. While advances in prevention and control research have led to improvements in cancer incidence and better survival from cancer overall, U.S. cancer inequities persist, and for some populations, gaps have widened over time.