Simon Lee

Biography

Simon Craddock Lee, PhD MPH, joined the faculty in late 2008. Prior to being recruited to Dallas, Dr. Lee was a Cancer Prevention Fellow in the ethics of prevention and public health at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), where he also served as Co-Chair of the Culture & Qualitative Research Interest Group, a scientific intramural association of the NIH. At UT Southwestern, he is a core member of the Population Sciences & Cancer Control program in the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Lee's science focuses on mixed-methods approaches to healthcare delivery research. His research program focuses on the culture and organization of cancer screening and cancer survivorship in urban and rural safety-net settings. He is MPI on an NCI award (R01 CA203856) to improve care coordination for patients with multiple chronic conditions also diagnosed with cancer, aka complex cancer suvivors. The study uses mixed-methods to systematically evaluate how local context influences evidence-based intervention effects at the system, clinic, provider and patient levels. Dr. Lee is principal investigator of a mixed-methods implementation study expanding rural breast cancer screening and patient navigation in 21 rural and underserved counties in North Texas that received a 2015 competitive renewal from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). Active disease sites include lung, colorectal, and cervical cancers through research support from the NCI, notably as a Co-Investigator in the Parkland-UT Southwestern PROSPR Center (U54 CA163308). As a medical anthropologist, Dr. Lee is committed to the integration of social science in medicine and healthcare delivery research. He contributes to culture/behavior and ethics curricula in the Medical School, in addition to formal consultation on stakeholder engagement, research design and qualitative methods through UTSW's Center for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research and the Center for Translational Medicine. Dr. Lee reviews for NSF programs in Cultural Anthropology and in Social & Economic Sciences, and serves on multiple NIH Special Emphasis panels. In 2016, he was appointed to the NCI's Central IRB Cancer Prevention & Control Committee. Dr. Lee has held various leadership positions in the American Anthropological Association since 2009 and is an elected Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology.

Research Interest

Complex patients, multiple chronic conditions Health disparities Healthcare delivery research Lung, Colorectal, Breast Cancers Medical anthropology Qualitative methods and analysis