Graham Colditz, MD, DrPH - Knol: a unit of knowledge

Dr. Colditz was born in Australia and received his B.Sc. and medical degree from the University of Queensland, Australia, and his M.P.H. and Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard University School of Public Health. In 1990 he was elected a Fellow in the Australian Faculty of Public Health Medicine, Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

For 25 years Dr. Colditz was at Harvard University where he served in a number of positions. From 1996-2006 he was principal investigator on the Nurses’ Health Study, a longitudinal study established in 1976, of 121,701 nurses, investigating risk factors for major chronic diseases in women. He established and was the founding principal investigator on the Growing Up Today Study relating diet and lifestyle of 16,883 adolescents ages 9 to 14 at entry to their growth and health outcomes. In 1998, he was promoted to full professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Colditz was also associate director of Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School from 2005-2006. He was director of the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention at HSPH and within the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center he was deputy associate director for shared resources and leader of the Cancer Epidemiology Program.

With longstanding interest in the causes and prevention of chronic disease, particularly among women, Dr. Colditz has evaluated numerous lifestyle factors, documenting that current use of postmenopausal hormone therapy increases the risk of breast cancer. He has developed statistical models to more accurately classify levels of risk for several cancers. Other areas of his expertise include tobacco and obesity in relation to cancer. He also documented that smoking increases risk of stroke and total mortality among women, and that weight gain increases the risk of diabetes. He has focused extensively on the validation of self-report information for use in large scale epidemiologic studies and refined diet assessment tools for use in public health settings such as WIC. He has devoted much effort to the application of scientific advances in cancer prevention to broader population programs working with the American Cancer Society and the Massachusetts Cancer Control Program. He also developed the website, www.yourdiseaserisk.wustl.edu, to communicate tailored prevention messages to the public.

Dr. Colditz has filled many professional leadership roles. He served as editor-in-chief of the journal Cancer Causes and Control from 1998 to 2006. In 2004, Dr. Colditz was awarded the American Cancer Society-Cissy Hornung Clinical Research Professorship. He has contributed to reports of the Surgeon General on Tobacco and Health, and served on committees of the National Academies of Science addressing Health Effects of exposure to herbicides in Vietnam Veterans (1992-1995 and 1995-1996), and the Committee to Assess Potential Health Effects from Exposure to Pave Paws Low-Level Phased Array Radiofrequency Energy. He also contributed chapters to the report from the National Academy of Science, “Fulfilling the Potential of Cancer Prevention and Early Detection”. He has served on the National Cancer Institute scientific peer review committees; Subcommittee E (program projects) and Subcommittee A (Cancer Center Support Grants); and is currently Chair of the Center for Scientific Research EPIC study section. In October 2006 on the basis of professional achievement and his commitment to public health, he was elected to membership of the Institute of Medicine, an independent body that advises the U.S. government on many issues affecting public health.

Dr. Colditz is a highly cited medical researcher http://hcr3.isiknowledge.com/author.cgi?id=2874&cb=998 . He has edited numerous books on cancer prevention and health promotion, and the Encyclopedia of Cancer in Society. Citations and citation metrics can be found at http://www.researcherid.com/rid/A-3963-2009

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