IHRP Deputy Director Named Associate Director of UIC Cancer Center Program

Marian Fitzgibbon, IHRP deputy director, has been appointed as associate director of the Cancer Center’s Cancer Control and Population Science Program. She has served as the interim associate director since November 2008.

“Marian has shown great dedication to fostering a more cohesive Cancer Control Program, her scholarship is outstanding, and she has terrific ideas about how to shape and lead the Program,” wrote Gary Kruh, the director of the UIC Cancer Center, in a September 29 e-mail announcement.

“I'm confident that the Cancer Center will benefit greatly from her advice and leadership as we move forward towards our goal of an application for National Cancer Institute designation" as a federally funded cancer center, he added.

A professor in the Department of Medicine with a joint appointment in the Health Policy and Administration Division of the School of Public Health, Fitzgibbon also is adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and the associate director for the Center for Management of Complex Chronic Care at the Jesse Brown Veteran Affairs Medical Center.

Fitzgibbon said she looks forward to fostering a higher level of collaboration between IHRP investigators and other UIC investigators who share interests in cancer control, as part of a broader effort to form a more cohesive Cancer Control and Population Science Program. She said she would like to see the Cancer Center more closely aligned with the Cancer Education and Research Training Program to support fellows through seminars, workshops, and mentorship.

The Cancer Control and Population Science Program is one of four large thematic research programs in the UIC Cancer Center.

Fitzgibbon’s research has focused predominantly on the role of excess body weight that develops from an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure and that is associated with an increased risk of a number of cancers. She has received consistent federal and non-federal funding for more than 15 years to conduct randomized clinical trials that address cancer risk reduction behaviors in both children and adults.

Her obesity prevention program for minority preschool children, called Hip Hop to Health, Jr., was successful with African-American children and is now being tested, with funding from the NCI, with a Latino population. She has also conducted interventions that address energy balance and breast health in both Latino and African American women.

Dr. Fitzgibbon recently completed an NCI-funded randomized trial that tested a 6-month weight-loss intervention involving African American women, followed by a one-year maintenance intervention. The published results of this trial showed a significant difference in weight loss between the intervention and control group.

Dr. Fitzgibbon, a fellow in the Society of Behavioral Medicine, serves regularly on review panels of the National Institutes of Health. She chaired the NIH Psychosocial Risk and Disease Prevention Study Section in 2006–2008 and serves on the Behavior Medicine and Intervention Outcomes Study Section.