Dr. Alpa V. Patel earned her Bachelor of Science from the University of Florida, her Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, and her Doctoral degree in Preventive Medicine with a concentration in Epidemiology from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. She has been with the American Cancer Society for more than 25 years and is the Senior Vice President of Population Science at the American Cancer Society where she oversees a team of approximately 55 research and study operations staff. She serves as the principal investigator of the Cancer Prevention Studies (CPS) II and 3 that are long-term, large-scale, epidemiologic cohort studies established by the American Cancer Society. Combined, these two cohorts include over 1.5 million participants with a variety of over 400,000 biologic samples (such as blood, buccal cells, saliva, stool, and tumor tissue). Recently, as the co-Principal Investigator, Dr. Patel and team launched the largest ever cancer cohort of Black women in the U.S. aimed to enroll at least 100,000 Black women to understand the multi-level drivers of cancer risk and outcomes in this population. Dr. Patel is a recognized leader in cancer epidemiology with particular emphases on the role of physical inactivity, obesity, sedentary behavior and cancer as well as blood-based markers of cancer detection. She serves on the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Counselors along with several other national and international scientific advisory committees. She has published over 250 scientific articles and book chapters, and her research has contributed significantly to national and international cancer prevention guidelines, such as the US Physical Activity Guidelines for Health and the American Cancer Society’s Nutrition and Physical Activity Guidelines for both cancer prevention and cancer survivorship.
