Kelly Kenzik

I am an Epidemiologist and Health Services Researcher.

Kelly Kenzik, Ph.D.

Boston University Medical Campus

I have been driven by the notion that we can create the best medical centers and the most advanced therapies, yet these are only accessible and usable by a fragment of the population in need. This has continued to motivate me to pursue a line of research that helps to bridge this gap.

Dr. Kelly Kenzik's interests include using advanced methodology to examine short- and long-term outcomes among patients with cancer. This involves the integration of clinical, administrative, financial, geographic, and biologic data, as well as patient-reported information to inform clinical decision making, policy development, and interventions for improving cancer care and patient outcomes.

The objective of Dr. Kenzik's current R37 is to generate evidence to inform the implementation of policies or interventions aimed at mitigating rural disparities in cancer mortality. The examination of mortality differences across multiple definitions of rurality will be critical to guide future research and allow for comparison of findings across studies. Additionally, the decomposition of county-level mortality rates will quantify excess mortality risks in rural and urban patients attributable to area-level factors, providing the hypothetical effects of a potential "intervention" at the county level on mortality disparities. Finally, the integration of a unique cohort of patients oversampled from high-risk regions of the US will demonstrate the impact of individual-level characteristics contributing to urban/rural mortality disparities in a multi-level framework.

Years of research focused on patient-level data highlighted a complexity surrounding patients with cancer that would require a methodology that incorporated multi-level factors.


Grant Listing
Project Title Grant Number Program Director Publication(s)
Understanding rural mortality disparities in cancer: a multi-level approach
7R37CA266193-02
Curt Dellavalle


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

Last Updated: 11/04/2022 01:31:09