Prof. Maria Katapodi

Over the past 20 years, my scholarship has aligned with personalized healthcare and public health genomic interventions in HBOC and Lynch syndrome. I have developed and tested public health and family-based interventions designed to improve awareness of hereditary cancer risk and the use of cancer genetic services. I collaborated with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services for statewide outreach and recruitment of families with high suspicion of HBOC in an efficacy randomized trial. I also developed and tested the Family Gene Toolkit, a web-based intervention that provides comprehensive information about cancer risks associated with HBOC, genetic testing, and two comprehensive modules enriched with patient excerpts regarding helpful coping and effective family communication about hereditary cancer risk. Since moving to Switzerland in 2014, I established and currently lead the Swiss Cancer Predisposition Genetic Screening Consortium and the CASCADE cohort, a Swiss-wide multidisciplinary initiative aiming to enhance the translation of genetic and genomic discoveries into public health and clinical interventions. We received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation to build a bilateral collaboration with S. Korea and adapt the Family Gene Toolkit in the Swiss and Korean contexts.