Roswell Park’s Dr. Martin C. Mahoney Named to State Panel on Colorectal Screening Awareness

BUFFALO, NY — Martin C. Mahoney, MD, PhD, an Associate Professor in the Departments of Health Behavior and Medicine at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, has been named to a new statewide panel that will promote expansion of colorectal cancer screening.

An initiative of the New York State Department of Health Cancer Services Program (NYSDOHCSP), the New York State Colorectal Cancer Guidance Group (CRCGG) is funded by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and aims to have 80 percent of all New York residents over age 50 screened for colorectal cancer by 2014.

The CRCGG will advise the NYSDOHCSP on strategies to increase overall screening rates at the policy, community, organizational, interpersonal and individual levels.

“This disease affects one in 11 people today, and nearly 50,000 people die from colorectal cancer every year in the U.S.,” said Dr. Mahoney. “While those numbers are scary, early intervention makes a tremendous difference in survival rates and quality of life for people with the disease. So we’re highly encouraged about the impact that awareness efforts like the CRCGG can have.”

Dr. Mahoney, who is board-certified in Family Medicine, joined Roswell Park’s staff in 1998 as Director of the Cancer Prevention & Detection and Employee Health clinics and Research Scientist in the Department of Cancer Prevention, Epidemiology & Biostatistics. He earned his doctoral degree in Epidemiology from the Roswell Park Graduate Division of the University at Buffalo (UB) in 1987, and his medical degree from the UB School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences in 1995. He completed residency training in Family Medicine at the UB Medical & Dental Consortium in 1998. His research focuses primarily on early detection of lung cancer, smoking cessation and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines.

The mission of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is to understand, prevent and cure cancer. Roswell Park, founded in 1898, was one of the first cancer centers in the country to be named a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center and remains the only facility with this designation in Upstate New York. The Institute is a member of the prestigious National Comprehensive Cancer Network, an alliance of the nation’s leading cancer centers; maintains affiliate sites; and is a partner in national and international collaborative programs. For more information, visit Roswell Park’s website at http://www.roswellpark.org, call 1-800-ROSWELL (1-800-767-9355) or email AskRoswell@Roswellpark.org.

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