Denise Lewis

Areas of Expertise:

  • Cancer Rates and Trends
  • Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Cancers
  • Geospatial Analysis
  • Determinants of Health Disparities

Denise Riedel Lewis received her Bachelor of Science degree in Medical Technology from The George Washington University, her MPH degree in Infectious Disease Epidemiology from Yale University, and her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Chronic Disease Epidemiology from The Johns Hopkins University.

At NCI, Dr. Lewis is chair of the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Rapid Response Surveillance Studies (RRSS) committee, and is a co-editor of the annual Cancer Statistics Review. She also maintains a grant portfolio emphasizing geospatial analysis of cancer data and geospatial methods. She is an advisor on the NCI “Did You Know?” video series, is a member of the NCI Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Workgroup, and is an NCI representative to the Healthy People 2020 initiative. Dr. Lewis is chair of the HD*Calc team which is focused on health disparities research and the promotion of the NCI HD*Calc software.

Dr. Lewis’ research interests include examining cancer incidence by histologic type, quality of histology in SEER data, and mapping cancer rates. Dr. Lewis leads a team on the evaluation of SEER data to determine the feasibility of earlier release of rates and statistics on a limited scale.

Dr. Lewis has published more than 30 peer-reviewed research articles and 6 book chapters. Prior to joining SRP, Dr. Lewis was a Branch Chief with the US Department of Agriculture, and an epidemiologist for the Environmental Protection Agency focusing on drinking water issues of naturally occurring arsenic in the US and China. She completed her masters and doctoral thesis work in NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics.

Last Updated: 30 Apr, 2021