Bettina Drake, PhD, MPH, has been promoted to associate professor of surgery in the Division of Public Health Sciences. Dr. Drake, who joined the faculty in 2009, is a cancer epidemiologist at the School of Medicine and Siteman Cancer Center. Her research interests are in reducing cancer disparities by focusing on cancer-prevention strategies and utilizing community-based approaches. Dr. Drake co-leads the PECaD Prostate Cancer Community Partnership, which provides education, outreach and screening to high-risk men with a goal to reduce prostate cancer disparities in the region.
Currently, she is the primary researcher of two Department of Defense funded studies. One study utilizes Veterans Affairs Cancer Registry data to study disparities in prostate cancer outcomes. The second study adds Washington University as a site of the Prostate Cancer Biorepository Network (PCBN), in which Dr. Drake is recruiting participants into a prostate cancer biorepository and conducts biospecimen science with the different PCBN sites.
Dr. Drake earned her MPH degree at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, Texas, and a doctoral degree in epidemiology at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. She completed the Alonzo Smythe Yerby Postdoctoral Fellowship in Social Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health.