Heather Spencer Feigelson, PhD, MPH is a Senior Investigator in the Institute for Health Research (IHR) at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, the Colorado Regional Lead for the Kaiser Permanente Research Bank (KPRB) and the National Lead of the KPRB Cancer Cohort. Dr. Feigelson has over 20 years of experience as a cancer epidemiologist with expertise in genetic susceptibility and genomics. Before joining Kaiser Permanente, she was the Strategic Director of Genetic Epidemiology at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, GA.
Much of her research has focused on genetic susceptibility to breast cancer. Dr. Feigelson participated in one of the first genome wide association studies of breast cancer, and currently is exploring the role of the gut microbiome in breast cancer risk. She has a long standing interest in steroid hormone metabolism and its role in cancer etiology and has also explored the role of obesity in cancer. Dr. Feigelson is committed to understanding factors that improve treatment response and survival in those living with cancer. She is investigating determinants of second cancers among women with breast cancer, including identifying molecular markers in DCIS that predict subsequent invasive breast cancer. Dr. Feigelson is leading a study of long term survival of ovarian cancer, and also serves as the co-lead of a colorectal cancer cohort that includes over 16,000 people diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
Dr. Feigelson earned her Masters of Public Health from San Diego State University, and her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She then completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Southern California, where she went on to become an assistant professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and worked on the Multi-Ethnic Cohort Study. She holds adjunct faculty appointments at the University of Colorado, Colorado School of Public Health, and Colorado State University. A list of Dr. Feigelson’s publications is found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/1nyar7C8z4I5o/bibliography/48162154/public/?sort=date&direction=ascending