I am a gynecologist with over 30 years experience in clinical gynecology and an Associate Professor in Ob/Gyn at FIU's Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. However I am particularly interested in cancer prevention. As such, my career over the past 18 years has been largely devoted to breast and ovarian cancer risk stratification and managment. An integral part of this is identification of carriers of hereditary cancer. In line with this, in 2020, I was appointed by the then president of ACOG Dr Eva Chalas' Presidential Task Force on Knowledge Gaps in Breast and Ovarian Cancer Risk Assessment, Management and Genetic Testing, and created an educational webinar and slide deck available to ACOG fellows. Prior to Covid, I was a speaker for the nonprofit Bright Pink, educating countless physicians and other integral health care providers on breast and ovarian cancer risk assessment, managment and genetic tresting, and I educated health care providers for various commercial genomic labs. As part of ACOG’s District XII Advisory Board and Patient Safety/Quality chair, I created an educational curriculum on breast/ovarian cancer risk assessment, management and genetic testing that I have given to providers in Florida and nationally over many years. Finally I founded the nonprofit Yodeah, whose mission is to educate the Ashkenazi Jewish community on their increased risk of carrying a BRCA mutation, and facilitate medical-grade, cost-effective testing; and I co-founded the Prevent Hereditary Cancer Coalition with the late Lauren Corduck from One in Forty. I am also on the advisory board of DenseBreast-info.com, a non-profit educating physicians and the community about mammographically dense breasts, increased risk of breast cancer and decreased sensitivity of screening mammograms in those patients. As part of these organizations, I have been educating physicians as well as laypersons on risk assessment, as well as managment, and helping patients advocate for the appropriate breast cancer screening based on their indivudual risk.
research interests
As you can see my research interests are in breast and ovarian cancer risk assessment and management. I am also quite interested on best practices to educate primary care providers, gynecologists as well as lay public about hereditary cancer identification as a means of cancer mitigation. Unfortunately, most hereditary cancer carriers are only identified after they have been identified with cancer, thus we have lost an opportunity for prevention. These patients do not self present to oncologists or genetics professionals and are cared for in the primary care and gynecologic sphere. Studies show that 20-25% of patients presenting to a routine gynecology or family practice office are eligible for hereditary cancer counseling and testing but are not being identified or referred. It is incumbent upon us to create tools for these healthcare providers to easily, accurately, and efficiently identify these patients, something I have been working on since 2020.
Other gynecologic interests include: 1. agents that help women clear high risk HPV when they are shedding as a means of reducing cervical cancer and precancer and as a direct result, help women avoid uncomfortable procedures like colposcopy.;
2. Agents to decrease bulk symptoms from fibroids, nonsurgical.
