Theresa Wicklin Gillespie PhD, MA, BSN, FAAN

Dr. Gillespie has three decades of experience in clinical oncology, including direct patient care. She developed and led the clinical trials programs at Winship Cancer Institute, conducting prospective therapeutic and cancer control studies for 14 years. As director of health services research at the Atlanta VA Medical Center for 10 years, she built and directed a program targeting such chronic conditions as cancer, and investigated various key outcomes, including mortality, morbidity, health-related quality of life (HRQOL), and costs.

Dr. Gillespie's research involves multiple cancer types, encompassing clinical, health services, and population-based investigations. Her breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer studies have been funded by multiple NIH institutes, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, CDC, American Cancer Society, Department of Defense, and the Avon and Movember foundations, and have focused on informed decision-making, measurement of quality and guideline-concordant care, cancer disparities (including racial, socioeconomic, and rural/urban underserved), risk communications, and the intersection of technology, patient comprehension, and outcomes.

Dr. Gillespie often consults VA, NSQIP, SEER, Medicare, and other national datasets in her research, and serves as the institutional lead for oncology health services research using the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) files for pancreatic, non-small cell lung cancer, esophageal, breast, gastric, melanoma, and prostate cancers. Dr. Gillespie is also funded by the Gates Foundation for a global web-based tool, the Global Health Primer, which provides education and information on research and development for neglected diseases and such non-communicable diseases as cancer in low- and middle-income countries.