MD
Assistant Professor, Psychiatry
UNC-Chapel Hill
Cancer Prevention and Control
Area of Interest
I am a psychiatrist and clinical researcher with advanced training in psycho-oncology and a career focus to improve cognitive outcomes in patients with cancer. My goal for this line of research is to rigorously evaluate objectively measured and patient-reported outcomes of cognition, understand how other psychosocial and biological variables impact cognition, and test pharmacological interventions to prevent or treat the cognitive consequences of cancer and cancer care.
Related to my interest in cognitive outcomes in cancer patients, I am the lead investigator on two clinical trials currently underway. The first is a randomized controlled trial, investigating the use of high dose intravenous thiamine for prevention of delirium during hospitalization for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The second is a one arm, phase II study, investigating the effectiveness of memantine to attenuate cognitive decline in women with early breast cancer receiving adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemotherapy. As an early career clinical investigator, my research has also examined cancer detection methods, bereavement characteristics in widowed fathers who have lost a spouse due to cancer, end-of-life experiences of mothers with advanced cancer, and depression and anxiety in women with breast cancer.
