Veenstra to serve as a co-leader of Rogel Center's Cancer Control and Population Sciences program

Christine Veenstra, M.D., M.S., associate professor of internal medicine, will serve as a co-leader of the U-M Rogel Cancer Center's Cancer Control and Population Sciences program. She will lead alongside C. Leigh Pearce, Ph.D., M.P.H., and Lauren Wallner, Ph.D., M.P.H. Veenstra replaces Sarah Hawley, Ph.D., M.P.H.. professor of internal medicine, who served as a program leader since 2021.

Veenstra previously served as vice-chair of Rogel’s Emerging Leaders Council. She earned her medical degree from Wayne State University and completed an internal medicine internship and residency at U-M, including serving as chief medical resident. She completed medical oncology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also earned a master’s in health policy research. Veenstra joined the U-M faculty in 2013.
 
Clinically, Veenstra treats patients with gastrointestinal cancers with a focus on colon and rectal cancer. Her research focuses on non-clinical factors that affect the value, quality and delivery of cancer across the care continuum. She is principal investigator of two R-level Awards from the National Cancer Institute: an R37 Merit Award to partner with the Georgia and LA County SEER registries to study use of targeted and immunotherapies among diverse patients with metastatic cancers; and an R01 Award (multi-PI with Dr. Hawley) to conduct a pragmatic randomized controlled trial of a dyadic intervention for colorectal cancer survivors and their support persons across National Community Oncology Research Program practices within the SWOG research base.