By Merin C. MacDonald
In this month’s Chair’s Spotlight, we highlight the work of Mara Meyer Epstein, ScD, ScM, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Health Systems Science.
Dr. Epstein is a cancer epidemiologist with research interests in hematological cancers and developing methods to facilitate the use of large electronic health datasets for cancer epidemiological studies. She is also interested in the study of cancer screening and prevention, and has a background in molecular and nutritional epidemiology. Her expertise is in the analysis of data from various sources including survey, registry, electronic health record, and claims-based datasets. She has collaborated closely with investigators at UMass Chan and healthcare systems across the United States on multi-site cancer research studies through her affiliation with the Cancer Research Network (CRN) and the Health Care Systems Research Network (HCSRN), including as a past member of the CRN Steering Committee.
Dr. Epstein has been the recipient of a KL2 training grant from the UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science (UMCCTS), and received funding from the National Cancer Institute and the FDA Sentinel Initiative to develop algorithms to identify patients diagnosed with lymphoma and precancerous monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) using electronic health data. She is currently working on developing an EHR-based algorithm to identify recurrent non-Hodgkin lymphoma, collaborating with co-PI Dr. Feifan Liu (PQHS) and Dr. Muthalagu Ramanathan (Division of Hematology/Oncology) at UMass Chan. She was also a Multiple Chronic Conditions Scholar through the HCSRN-OAIC AGING Initiative (2021-22), and received an AGING Initiative pilot grant to study multiple chronic conditions in older patients with MGUS. She is currently the site principal investigator at UMass Chan Medical School in the NIH-funded All of Us Research Program, a nationwide initiative with a focus on precision medicine, and is responsible for the enrollment, engagement, and retention of 10,000 participants over five years.
Dr. Epstein joined the faculty at UMass Chan in 2013. In addition to her appointment in Medicine, she also currently holds appointments in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing, and is an inaugural co-chair of the Cancer Screening Research Committee of the UMass Cancer Center. She also teaches courses in all three schools. Dr. Epstein earned her ScD and ScM, both in Epidemiology, from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Cancer Epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Dr. Epstein’s work as an epidemiologist is a prime example of the wide-ranging, and inter- and cross-departmental projects that our investigators are engaged in. While primarily focused on cancer epidemiology, her work is expansive and has wide-ranging applications as evidenced in her All of Us Research Program project. We are grateful for her contributions to the Department of Medicine.