Medical sociologist Pamela Hull was named associate director of population science and community impact at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center
She will also serve as the William Stamps Farish Endowed Chair in Cancer Research and join the UK College of Medicine as an associate professor of behavioral science.
Hull’s expertise is in the development, testing and dissemination of behavioral interventions to promote cancer prevention behaviors, and she has more than 15 years of experience conducting community-engaged research. She specializes in HPV-mediated cancer prevention, childhood obesity prevention, community-engaged research, and health disparities.
In her role as associate director, Hull will oversee Markey’s community outreach and engagement functions in addition to its population science research agenda and infrastructure, which includes Markey’s Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program. She will also have oversight of the Kentucky Cancer Program-East and the Kentucky Cancer Consortium. The goal of Markey’s community outreach and engagement efforts is to accelerate science-to-practice translation across the cancer care continuum, with an emphasis on the needs of Kentucky’s citizens.
Two of Hull’s extramurally funded grants will also move to the UK. The first is a grant from NCI focused on increasing HPV vaccination in community-based pediatric practices. The second is a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture funding the development and testing of a smartphone application featuring shopping tools and nutrition education tools intended for use by low-income and nutritionally at-risk families and their children.
Prior to joining the UK Markey Cancer Center, Hull was an associate professor in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s Division of Epidemiology and served as associate director of community outreach and engagement for the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville. During her tenure at Vanderbilt, she led many community-engagement activities that helped reduce the cancer burden and health disparities with partners in the region.
