Beth Anne Jones, PhD, MPH

Dr. Jones is a Yale-trained cancer epidemiologist whose work and teaching focus is on health disparities. Her research is primarily focused on racial/ethnic differences in cancer screening, prevention, and cancer outcomes. A recently completed study tested 4 evidence-based interventions to address overdue colorectal cancer screening in a large urban primary care clinic. Ongoing projects include working with Implementation Science research teams to address system and patient level factors that compromise the full benefit of cervical cancer screening in minority populations and in developing mitigation strategies to protect respiratory health in large clinical workplace. Other projects focus on the impact of COVID-19 on adults and GEN-Z populations in at-risk communities with implications for cancer prevention and screening behaviors.

In leadership roles in Community Outreach Education efforts for the Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center and as inaugural Director of Smilow Cancer Hospital's Cancer Screening & Prevention Program, Dr. Jones has led a number of programmatic efforts to engage underserved communities in cancer prevention and screening activities throughout a large catchment area. Using best community practices, adapted due to recent pandemic, we created a platform for reaching nearly 100,000 community members per year with vetted, evidence-based health prevention and screening messages in Spanish and English languages, launched a community facing navigation program that screened and addressed social determinants of health (SDOH) barriers, and are now adapting some of these strategies to engage traditionally under-served populations on the important role of cancer related genetic testing in a large health system.

These translational efforts are a natural outgrowth of her population-based studies of mammography screening and other health behaviors, breast density, and colorectal cancer screening in Hispanic/Latinas and African American/Black women living in the Northeast, US. Using a multidisciplinary approach, she has also evaluated the role(s) of obesity, tumor characteristics, selected genetic alterations and genetic polymorphisms, as well as social class, medical care, and psychosocial factors, in explaining differences cancer stage at diagnosis and survival between African Americans and Whites in breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer.