Anne C. Kirchhoff

I am a Health Services Researcher.

Anne C. Kirchhoff, Ph.D., M.P.H.

University of Utah

Navigating the complexity of health care and insurance is overwhelming for many cancer patients. Patients have to become their own advocates, while dealing with the health effects and stress of a cancer diagnosis. This can be particularly hard for adolescent and young adult cancer patients, who typically have little experience with insurance complexities prior to diagnosis.

As a cancer health services researcher, Dr. Kirchhoff's program primarily concerns evaluating patient outcomes related to health care access, costs, and cancer late effects, and developing interventions for childhood, adolescent and young adult cancer survivors, with a focus on addressing the social and financial consequences of cancer. Young cancer patients in particular have to navigate many health care transitions - moving from oncology and primary care, and between pediatric and adult cancer care. To understand these issues, Dr. Kirchhoff's research program combines the use of large administrative and population-based datasets to identify the needs of cancer patients and survivors along with patient-centered data collection and intervention development in oncology settings. In the current R01 project, Dr. Kirchhoff and her team will work with the Huntsman-Intermountain Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Care Program to refine and pilot test a health insurance education program to improve insurance literacy and cost-related literacy among adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer. The goal will be to develop a program that can be implemented in other care settings to improve insurance experiences for AYAs both in academic and community cancer centers.

Dr. Kirchhoff first became interested in health services research as a research project manager working with federally qualified community health centers to improve patient chronic disease management. Her interest in cancer was sparked by her work with the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, where she has led and collaborated on several projects related to insurance coverage, cost concerns, and employment outcomes of long-term survivors.


Grant Listing
Project Title Grant Number Program Director Publication(s)
Improving Health Insurance Experiences for Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Patients
1R01CA242729-01
Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou Publish File


To request edits to this profile, please contact Mark Alexander at alexandm@mail.nih.gov.

Last Updated: 09/11/2019 01:03:44