Dr. Colleen McBride Named Winship's Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement
By Shannon McCaffrey
Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University (Winship) announces the appointment of Colleen McBride, PhD, as the new associate director for community outreach and engagement. McBride, a professor and the Grace Crum Rollins Chair of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, is the newest faculty member to join the Winship Executive Committee. She will continue to hold her current roles at Rollins.
As associate director for community outreach and engagement, McBride will provide vision and oversight for Winship’s community-facing activities. These include efforts in cancer health disparities, recruitment of underserved populations to clinical trials, cancer risk mitigation, cancer prevention, and cancer control interventions.
“Colleen will provide very strong leadership for Winship in this role and will deeply assess how to best serve the people of Georgia,” says Winship Executive Director Walter J. Curran, Jr., MD, the Lawrence W. Davis Chair in Radiation Oncology and the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and Chair in Cancer Research. “Her leadership is vital to our core mission and our preparation for NCI comprehensive cancer center status renewal.”
McBride came to Emory from the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health, where she served as founding chief and senior investigator of the Social and Behavioral Research Branch. Her research focuses on innovative public health interventions to promote risk-reducing behaviors, specifically using genetic information to motivate healthy behaviors. Genetic information, scientists believe, eventually will allow lifestyle interventions to be personalized to make compliance with healthy behaviors easier.
As a National Cancer Institute-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, Winship performs research relevant to decreasing cancer incidence and mortality in Georgia, including minority and underserved populations. Winship faculty are currently performing research that translates evidence-based cancer prevention and control interventions to the local level, including a project to improve low HPV vaccination rates and a project related to early detection of breast and cervical cancers. These projects engage partnerships with other health care delivery systems and state and community agencies.
“I am excited to join with and expand upon Winship’s ongoing efforts to engage with community partners for cancer preventive strategies in Georgia,” says McBride.
