Professor
Medical University of South Carolina
Dr. Ford is a tenured professor and Vice Chair of Departmental Excellence and Engagement in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). She is the Associate Director of Community Outreach and Engagement at the NCI-designated MUSC Hollings Cancer Center (HCC), where Dr. Raymond DuBois is Director.
Regarding her overall academic focus, three of her career objectives are to 1) conduct cancer population health educational activities with community partners in SC; 2) develop specific, targeted research to improve cancer health outcomes; and 3) increase the number of investigators in SC who conduct cancer population health research.
Dr. Ford co-leads the MUSC HCC NCI Minority/Underserved NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP). She is also the MPI, with Dr. Robert Winn at the Virginia Commonwealth University and Louise Henderson from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, of a new multi-state, multi-institutional Stand Up to Cancer grant. The first aim of the study is to initiate and evaluate a high-impact, multimodal, and multilevel navigation intervention to promote lung cancer screening among Black people from both rural and urban medically underserved communities in Virginia, SC, and North Carolina. The second aim is to develop a robust, shared population-based cohort and biorepository to further support research in understanding biologic determinants or risk factors for poor lung cancer outcomes among Blacks from the three participating states. This “cell-to-society” approach is expected to create a sustainable research infrastructure and to develop better methods to identify those at the highest risk for a diagnosis of, and/or poor treatment outcomes for, lung cancer.
Dr. Ford is the author/co-author of more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers. She co-edited the 2017 and 2020 Advances in Cancer Research volumes titled “Cancer Disparities” and “Cancer Health Equity,” respectively, and has published nine book chapters.
