Georgetown Lombardi Survivorship Research Initiative Seminar Series – “Accelerated Aging in Childhood Cancer Survivors – From Observation to Intervention”
The Georgetown Lombardi Survivorship Research Initiative works to optimize cancer survivorship across the lifespan and ensure equity for patients of every race, ethnicity, gender and socially determined status. This seminar series will invite scientists from Georgetown and outside institutions to present their research. It will also provide a forum in which individuals may present work in progress to receive meaningful feedback from a multidisciplinary audience.
Kirsten Ness, PT, PhD, FAPTA
Full Member
Department of Epidemiology and Cancer Control
Comprehensive Cancer Center
St. Jude Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
presents
“Accelerated Aging in Childhood Cancer Survivors – From Observation to Intervention”
Meet the Speaker:
Dr. Ness will speak from 10 – 11 a.m. Immediately following the SRI seminar, there will be a 30 minute Meet the Professor session, which will provide attendees an opportunity to engage in Q&A and discuss specific research subjects with Dr. Ness.
About the Speaker:
Kirsten Ness joined the faculty at St. Jude in 2006 as an Assistant Member. She was promoted to Associate Member in 2010 and Full Member in 2015. She is a physical therapist and clinical epidemiologist.
Her research is focused on recognizing, describing, and remediating functional limitations in childhood cancer survivors. This includes determining the extent to which the disease and/or its treatment have left them with organ system deficits that immediately or eventually interfere with their abilities to participate in normal movement, and thus restrict participation in school, work, leisure time, physical activity, and sport.
Her work uses epidemiological, clinical, and laboratory approaches to evaluate and describe physical performance, fitness, and physiologic reserve. This work has also helped her determine risk factors for and identify potential biological mechanisms responsible for the impairments that result in functional loss. Data from epidemiologic and clinical investigations have allowed her to understand the specific physical limitations and fitness deficits experienced by children during cancer therapy and by childhood cancer survivors, to identify those most at risk for developing limitations, and to develop interventions designed to prevent physical disability or restore physical health.
Her more recent work with computational biology and laboratory investigators has allowed her to begin to document the biological processes potentially responsible for the loss of physiologic reserve (frailty) in childhood cancer survivors. Her Human Performance Laboratory offers her the opportunity to collaborate with other investigators who are also interested in physiological impairments and problems with movement and physical function.
She is a member of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) Steering, Executive and Publications Committees, the Children’s Oncology Group Survivorship and Outcomes Steering Committee and the Oncology Section of the American Physical Therapy Association Research Committee. She serves on the Editorial Boards of Pediatric Blood and Cancer, Physical Therapy, Pediatric Physical Therapy and the Journal of Cancer Survivorship. She also serves as a member of the Clinical Management of Patients in Community-based Settings Study Section for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and has served as an ad hoc member of Several Special Emphasis Panels for the NIH and other granting agencies.
At St. Jude, she is the co-chair of the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Working Group for the Cancer Prevention and Control Program, serves as the faculty representative to the Federal Demonstration Partnership, and is a member of the Clinical Trials Scientific Review Committee (CTSRC) and the CTSRC Behavioral and Psychosocial Sub-committee.
In the department of Epidemiology and Cancer Control, she manages all of the data requests for the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort data and supervises the workflow of the analytic team. She also manages internal requests for CCSS and other data. She recently served on the National Cancer Institute Think Tanks on Aging in Cancer Survivors where they evaluated models of, measurement of and interventions to address aging in survivor populations.