Carol Ochoa

This year, 25 people around the country received the annual NCI Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Fellow Transition Award (F99/K00), given by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute. For the first time, a USC student is among the recipients.

Carol Ochoa, MPH, a doctoral candidate from Los Angeles who’s in the Division of Health Behavior Research in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, earned the six-year, $463,246 fellowship grant.

The awards are designed to encourage and retain outstanding graduate students who have demonstrated potential and interest in pursuing careers as independent cancer researchers. Its goal is to facilitate the transition to successful cancer research postdoctoral appointments and provide opportunities for career development activities relevant to their long-term career goals.

The proposed research examines how multi-level factors contribute to disparities in health-related quality of life and survivorship care in diverse populations of young adult cancer survivors. During her dissertation research (the F99 phase), Ochoa focuses on the collaborative management of cancer among ethnically diverse survivor-caregivers. During the K00 phase, she will extend this research and training by developing expertise in understanding the healthcare system and policy-level factors that contribute to disparities in cancer survivorship.

Ochoa’s mentorship team for this proposal includes Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, PhD, Kimberly Miller, Junhan Cho, and Albert Farias of the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, as well as Randall Chan, MD, of the Department of Pediatrics, and Joel Milam, PhD, of UC Irvine’s Department of Epidemiology.