Medicine & Health

Cancer Systems Epidemiology Insights and Future Opportunities

Published July 19, 2022 Partnered Collections

A collection of 7 papers that highlight findings based on systems epidemiology approaches and opportunities for the future.

Systems epidemiology offers a more comprehensive and holistic approach to studies of cancer in populations by considering high dimensionality measures from multiple domains, assessing the inter-relationships among risk factors, and considering changes over time. These approaches offer a framework to account for the complexity of cancer and contribute to a broader understanding of the disease.

NCI sponsored a workshop in February 2019 to facilitate discussion about the opportunities and challenges of the application of systems epidemiology approaches for cancer research resulting in the following articles.

Image Credit: Systems Artwork by Katie Kortokrax

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PLOS ONE
PLOS Medicine
PLOS Computational Biology

PLOS ONE

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10.1371/journal.pone.0282878 CC BY 4.0

PLOS ONE A complex systems model of breast cancer etiology: The Paradigm II Model
May 19, 2023 Robert A. Hiatt, Lee Worden, David Rehkopf, Natalie Engmann, Melissa Troester, John S. Witte, Kaya Balke, Christian Jackson, Janice Barlow, Suzanne E. Fenton, Sarah Gehlert, Ross A. Hammond, George Kaplan, John Kornak, Krisida Nishioka, Thomas McKone, Martyn T. Smith, Leonardo Trasande, Travis C. Porco

Background: Complex systems models of breast cancer have previously focused on prediction of prognosis and clinical events for individual…
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10.1371/journal.pone.0268118 CC BY 4.0

PLOS ONE The potential epidemiologic, clinical, and economic impact of requiring schools to offer Physical Education (PE) classes in Mexico City
May 6, 2022 Marie C. Ferguson, Sarah M. Bartsch, Kelly J. O’Shea, Diana M. Thomas, Timothy H. Moran, Mario Solano Gonzales, Patrick T. Wedlock, Sindiso Nyathi, Matthew Morgan, Kevin L. Chin, Sheryl A. Scannell, Daniel L. Hertenstein, Molly Domino, Kushi Ranganath, Atif Adam, Katherine Tomaino Fraser, Adam Fraser, Bruce Y. Lee

Background: Many schools have been cutting physical education (PE) classes due to budget constraints, which raises the question of whether…
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10.1371/journal.pone.0250061 CC BY 4.0

PLOS ONE Systems epidemiology and cancer: A review of the National Institutes of Health extramural grant portfolio 2013–2018
April 15, 2021 Marissa M. Shams-White, Rolando Barajas, Roxanne E. Jensen, Melissa Rotunno, Hannah Dueck, Elizabeth M. Ginexi, Scott D. Rogers, Elizabeth M. Gillanders, Leah E. Mechanic

Objectives: Systems epidemiology approaches may lead to a better understanding of the complex and dynamic multi-level constellation of…
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10.1371/journal.pone.0255328 CC BY 4.0

PLOS ONE Facilitating cancer systems epidemiology research
December 31, 2021 Rolando Barajas, Brionna Hair, Gabriel Lai, Melissa Rotunno, Marissa M. Shams-White, Elizabeth M. Gillanders, Leah E. Mechanic

Systems epidemiology offers a more comprehensive and holistic approach to studies of cancer in populations by considering high…

PLOS Medicine

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10.1371/journal.pmed.1004027 CC BY 4.0

PLOS Medicine Cancer systems epidemiology: Overcoming misconceptions and integrating systems approaches into cancer research
June 17, 2022 Patricia L. Mabry, Nicolaas P. Pronk, Christopher I. Amos, John S. Witte, Patrick T. Wedlock, Sarah M. Bartsch, Bruce Y. Lee

Patricia Mabry and coauthors discuss application of systems approaches in cancer…

PLOS Computational Biology

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10.1371/journal.pone.1009020 CC BY 4.0

PLOS Computational Biology Reflecting on 20 years of breast cancer modeling in CISNET: Recommendations for future cancer systems modeling efforts
June 17, 2021 Amy Trentham-Dietz, Oguzhan Alagoz, Christina Chapman, Xuelin Huang, Jinani Jayasekera, Nicolien T. van Ravesteyn, Sandra J. Lee, Clyde B. Schechter, Jennifer M. Yeh, Sylvia K. Plevritis, Jeanne S. Mandelblatt, for the Breast Working Group of the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET)

Since 2000, the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET) modeling teams have developed…
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10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009471 CC BY 4.0

PLOS Computational Biology Building and experimenting with an agent-based model to study the population-level impact of CommunityRx, a clinic-based community resource referral intervention
October 25, 2021 Stacy Tessler Lindau, Jennifer A. Makelarski, Chaitanya Kaligotla, Emily M. Abramsohn, David G. Beiser, Chiahung Chou, Nicholson Collier, Elbert S. Huang, Charles M. Macal, Jonathan Ozik, Elizabeth L. Tung

CommunityRx (CRx), an information technology intervention, provides patients with a personalized list of healthful community resources…