Dr. O'Neill is a Clinical Health Psychologist whose program of research focuses on how patients and their health care providers interpret and apply novel risk information, such as genomic risks, to make decisions that can reduce cancer morbidity and mortality. Over the past decade, Dr. O'Neill and her team have assessed patient outcomes following genomic risk communication, primarily among women with breast cancer and those with a family history of breast and/or ovarian cancer, and developed interventions to support outcomes in these populations.

This early work in genomic testing allowed Dr. O'Neill to recognize that recent mandates for patient disclosure of mammographic breast density following routine screening mammography could serve as an opportunity to reach women at clinically elevated risk for breast cancer. Effective interventions could leverage this communication to encourage uptake of under-utilized risk management. In her R01-funded study, "Applying Breast Density to Risk Counseling," Dr. O'Neill and her team will translate a print intervention that they developed for this population to a web-based format and test this personalized web intervention vs. usual care in a randomized controlled trial. As part of this trial, they also will examine the lifetime costs, benefits, and harms of the intervention in order to contribute to policy discussions surrounding density disclosure.