Jennifer McGee-Avila is a current Cancer Prevention Postdoctoral Fellow with the National Institutes of Health, at the National Cancer Institute. Her primary appointment is in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, in the Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch where she is interested in descriptive epidemiology, cancer prevention in people living with HIV, and health inequities research. She is currently examining cancer risk and cancer burden in people living with HIV, using large medical claims databases and epidemiology population-based cohorts. Her secondary appointment is within the Division of Cancer Control & Population Sciences, with the Healthcare Delivery Research Program, in the Health Systems and Interventions Research Branch, examining social determinants of health, multilevel influences on/and addressing social risk of cancer care delivery.
Jennifer is also a part of the inaugural cohort of HPRS in 2016. While an HPRS Scholar she received awards from Academy Health, the Alice S. Hersh Scholarship and Diversity Scholars recipient; the Gallo Award for Research Excellence from Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and received the Dr. Ronald Altman Award for Outstanding Student Work from the New Jersey Public Health Association for a paper that examined patterns of HIV Testing among New Jersey Medicaid Enrollees Diagnosed with Invasive Cervical Cancer.
She earned a Ph.D. in Urban Systems from an interdisciplinary program between Rutgers School of Nursing and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, in Newark, NJ. For her dissertation research, Dr. McGee-Avila utilized mixed methods approaches to examine multilevel contextual factors that influence cervical cancer screening among women with HIV in New Jersey Ryan White Part D clinics. She also has a M.P.H. from Rutgers School of Public Health and a B.A. in anthropology from UCLA.
