Exercise Therapy for Prevention and Treatment of Cancer

Dr. Lee Jones 

In this lecture, Dr. Jones will discuss the considerable clinical and public interest in whether engaging in exercise, either among those individuals at elevated risk of cancer or those recently diagnosed with cancer, can influence disease development and progression. Dr. Jones will review the current evidence base as well as ongoing studies linking exercise to cancer risk as well as the impact of exercise in those diagnosed with cancer.

Dr. Lee W. Jones is a Member and Attending Physiologist in the Department of Medicine and Director of the Exercise-Oncology Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Jones completed PhD and Postdoctoral Fellowship in Exercise Oncology at the University of Alberta. He joined MSKCC in February 2014. Dr. Jones research program focuses on a translational approach to the investigation of structured exercise therapy on cancer pathogenesis. He has published numerous scientific articles and has served on several working groups at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN). Dr. Jones’ research program has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, American Cancer Society, and U.S. Department of Defense.

Generational Overlap: Changing Demography and Shared Lifetimes

Dr. Marcy Carlson

This talk will consider how changing demographic patterns (especially declining/delayed fertility and longer life expectancies) shape the prevalence of generational overlap, especially for children and grandparents. Generational overlap in the form of shared lifetimes represents a fundamental condition guiding whether and how kin relationships across generations may develop and how resources may be shared – with notable variation by socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and family complexity. 

Marcia (Marcy) J. Carlson is the Sewell-Bascom Professor of Sociology, and Associate Dean of Graduate Education, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her primary research interests center on the links between family contexts and the wellbeing of children and parents, with attention to inequality and public policy. She served from 2016-2021 as Director of UW’s Center for Demography and Ecology, and in 2021, she was Vice President of the Population Association of America. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and several private foundations. She is currently co-PI of NextGenPop, a program focused on recruiting the next generation of scholars into population research. 

Orchestrating Immunological Symphony in Type 2 Diabetes

Jason K. Kim, Ph.D.

Obesity is a leading cause of type 2 diabetes, and inflammation plays a critical role as a molecular link. This lecture presents how inflammation causes insulin resistance, an early characteristic of type 2 diabetes, as cytokines regulate glucose metabolism in skeletal muscle and liver. Pro-inflammatory macrophages are involved in this obesity-mediated event, including liver disease. In all, obesity and aging are physiological states of low-grade, systemic inflammation, and metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, may be treated by targeting our body’s immunological system.

Dr. Kim received his B.S. from UC Irvine in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics from USC in 1996. He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor in the Section of Endocrinology and metabolism at Yale Medical School in 2002, moved to Penn State College of Medicine as an Associate Professor of Cellular and molecular Physiology in 2005, and joined UMass as a Full Professor with tenure in 2008. As an NIH-funded investigator since 2001, his research studies the molecular link between obesity, inflammation, and type 2 diabetes, publishing over 180 peer-reviewed articles. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Seoul National University in Korea, an Adjunct Investigator at Harvard Medical School, and serves as a Chair of NIH and AHA grant review committees, Dean’s Advisory Board at the University of Hong Kong, External Advisory Committee at JHU, Columbia, and Hawaii, and scientific advisory boards of pharma. He has further mentored more than 100 MD/PhD students, undergraduate interns, research/clinical fellows, and junior faculty, many are now established investigators.

UMass Black Women United are proud to welcome you to a UMass Center for Research on Families (CRF) Tay Gavin Lecture presented by Dr. Katrina Hutchins. Many Black women in higher education are exhausted and burned out, as they are experiencing higher levels of stress, anxiety, relationship-breakdown, insomnia, depression, and emotional and physical fatigue. Their struggles often are unspoken, and their voices are often minimized or muted. Dr. Katrina Hutchins will amplify the need for voice power, while inspiring Black women to remember and reconnect to their “whole voice” when navigating professionally and personally. She will share insights and strategies for daring to own the power of voice to be seen, heard, and valued.

Dr. Katrina Hutchins is the Founder & CEO of Re-Source Solutions, a personal and professional growth and development company whose research is focused on the voices of women in workplaces where organizational silence is present. As the creator of the Voice Positioning System, Dr. Hutchins addresses the power dynamics of silence and helps women explore their voice behavior and to align new behaviors with their intrinsic power to be seen, heard, and valued.