OCS Staff
Julia H. Rowland, PhD
Director
Dr. Rowland received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University and completed a two-year NIH-funded post-doctoral fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in psychosocial oncology. While at MSKCC, where she held joint appointments in pediatrics and neurology, Dr. Rowland helped to develop and was the first Director of the Post-Treatment Resource Program, an innovative resource that continues to provide a full range of non-medical services to patients and their families after the end of treatment. In 1990 Dr. Rowland became founding Director of the Psycho-Oncology Program at Georgetown University, where she held appointments in the Department of Psychiatry and at the Lombardi Cancer Center. Since joining the NCI in 1999, she has sought to champion the visibility of and investment in cancer survivorship research both within the Institute and across other federal and non-governmental agencies, and to raise public awareness about the health and quality-of-life needs of the growing population of cancer survivors and their families.
Across her career as a clinician, researcher and teacher in the area of psychosocial aspects of cancer, Dr. Rowland has worked with and conducted competitively funded research among both pediatric and adult cancer survivors and their families, and published broadly in psycho-oncology. She co-edited the ground-breaking text Handbook of Psychooncology (Oxford University Press, 1989), as well as the more recent Handbook of Cancer Control and Behavioral Science (American Psychological Association Press, 2008). Her particular areas of research interest are in developmental stage and adaptation to illness, sexual function post-treatment, the interface between cancer and aging, cancer caregiving and its impact on the health and well-being of providers and recipients of this care, health promotion and adherence to medical recommendations after cancer, and the development and application of metrics to evaluate the impact of cancer survivorship research on the quality of care and outcomes for the growing population of those living long-term with a cancer history.
Catherine M. Alfano, PhD
Deputy Director
Dr. Alfano earned her MS and PhD in clinical psychology with an emphasis in behavioral medicine from the University of Memphis. She completed her residency in clinical rehabilitation psychology at the University of Washington Medical Center. Following her residency, she completed a clinical fellowship in psycho-oncology at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, as well as an NCI-funded post-doctoral research fellowship in Biobehavioral Cancer Prevention and Control at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington.
Dr. Alfano’s research interests focus on interdisciplinary cancer rehabilitation and survivorship. Specifically, her research aims to promote healthy behavior change in survivors, including physical activity, dietary intake, stress management, and smoking cessation; develop and test interventions that prevent or ameliorate the long-term and late effects of cancer and treatment; and determine the biobehavioral interrelationships between cancer-related symptoms, healthy behaviors, energy balance, and immune and endocrine functioning that may impact cancer prognosis.
Debbie Allen
Program Support Assistant
Ms. Allen has been with the National Institutes of Health since 2007 and has served with both the research program and scientific review components. She also has over a decade of experience in the private sector, having worked for the Association Society Insurance Corp, and Parallax Inc. as a senior records technician on contract to FDA.
Janet de Moor, PhD, MPH
Program Director
Dr. de Moor received an MPH in Health Behavior and Health Promotion and a PhD in Behavioral Science from the University of Texas at Houston School of Public Health. She completed a predoctoral fellowship at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Department of Behavioral Science, with a focus on psycho-oncology, and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard School of Public Health in the Department of Society, Human Development and Health and the Center for Community-Based Research at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Prior to joining the National Cancer Institute, Dr. de Moor was an assistant professor at The Ohio State University College of Public Health.
Dr. de Moor’s research interests include the socioeconomic and psychosocial impact of a cancer diagnosis. Her recent work has focused on cancer survivors’ work outcomes, with an emphasis on characterizing the long-term patterns of employment in this population, as well as the intrapersonal-, workplace-, and clinical-level factors that influence cancer survivors’ work lives.
Danielle Hartigan, PhD, MPH
Cancer Prevention Fellow
Dr. Hartigan is a postdoctoral fellow in the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program at the National Cancer Institute. She joined the Office of Cancer Survivorship in September 2012. Prior to joining OCS, Dr. Hartigan earned a BA in Psychology, with a minor in Mathematics, from Providence College, in their Liberal Arts Honors Program. She earned a Masters and PhD in Psychology from Northeastern University, as well as a Masters in Public Health from Harvard, with a concentration in Quantitative Methods.
Dr. Hartigan’s research interests include patient-provider communication, patient-centered care, patient perspective and affective experience, and nonverbal behavior. She also has interests in survivorship care planning, survivors' emotional adjustment and informational needs, as well as barriers to quality patient-provider communication in survivorship.
Siobhan White Phillips, PhD, MPH
Cancer Prevention Fellow
Dr. Phillips is a postdoctoral fellow in the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program at the National Cancer Institute. She joined the Office of Cancer Survivorship in September 2012. Prior to joining OCS, Dr. Phillips earned a B.S. in Kinesiology with a concentration in clinical applied exercise physiology from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, a PhD in Kinesiology with a concentration in exercise psychology from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, and a Masters of Public Health in Quantitative Methods from Harvard University.
Dr. Phillips’ research interests include understanding the biopsychosocial mechanisms underlying the relationship between physical activity and health and disease outcomes in cancer survivors, the intersection of aging and cancer, the role of physical activity in the primary and secondary prevention of cancer, and the translation of research in these areas to practice.
Office of Cancer Survivorship
Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences
National Cancer Institute
6116 Executive Blvd. Suite 404
Bethesda, MD 20892-7397
Phone Number (301) 402-2964
Fax (301) 594-5070
ncidccpsocsweb-r@mail.nih.gov
