Melissa Marver

Dr. Melissa Marver has joined the NCI Surveillance Research Program (SRP)’s Surveillance Informatics Branch (SIB) as a contractor through Essex Management, an Emmes company. Melissa is a program manager for the National Childhood Cancer Registry (NCCR) and data linkage projects within SRP. Before joining SRP, Melissa was a contractor in the Center for Biomedical Informatics & Information Technology (CBIIT), where she was lead author of a report for the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative (CCDI). This report included a literature review and landscape analysis, and focused on childhood and adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer patients' participation in research and engagement in survivorship care.

Melissa earned her Master of Science (MS) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Population Health from University of Wisconsin-Madison, where her research centered on healthcare experiences related to cancer. Her master’s thesis investigated limited English proficient (LEP) adults’ experiences with preventive cancer care; her dissertation was a qualitative analysis of families’ experiences with childhood cancer and pediatric hospitalizations. She has worked and trained with researchers globally through the Directory of Individual Patient Experiences (DIPEx) International, and across the United States through the Health Experiences Research Network (HERN). In addition to her qualitative work, she has considerable quantitative training, and was a teaching assistant for multiple graduate-level epidemiology courses.

Prior to graduate school, Melissa had a decade-long career working in user experience research, strategy, and design. Melissa earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Engineering Psychology (Human Factors & Ergonomics) from Tufts University.