Tara M. Friebel is a cancer epidemiologist with expertise in global oncology and implementation science. Her research focuses on the prevention, early detection, and treatment of breast and cervical cancer in sub-Saharan Africa and the disparities in cancer care that exist in low-resource settings.

Her research in Africa has investigated geographic, clinical, and sociodemographic factors among cervical cancer patients in Botswana and the use of implementation science methods to reduce the breast cancer burden in Tanzania. She also has conducted research on guidelines for cervical cancer screening in HIV-endemic countries and disparities in risk factors for the breast cancer triple negative subtype among Black women undergoing screening mammography at the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

In 2023, she received a new investigator award from the American Society for Preventive Oncology. Her doctoral research was supported with funding from the National Cancer Institute.

At Rutgers, she will be affiliated with Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in the Cancer Epidemiology and Health Outcomes section of the Division of Medical Oncology. Previously, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She received a Ph.D. degree in epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and an M.P.H. degree focused in chronic disease epidemiology from Johns Hopkins. She also was a research project manager at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and University of Pennsylvania.

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• Cancer Epidemiologist to Join Rutgers Global Health Institute — Tara M. Friebel researches the prevention and early detection of women’s cancers in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on implementation science. She will be an assistant research professor of global health at the institute.