Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement
Wendy F. Cohn, MEd, PhD
As the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center’s inaugural associate director for community outreach and engagement, Wendy Cohn, MEd, PhD, leads efforts to prevent cancer, reduce its burden, and improve cancer health outcomes in the region UVA Health serves. She directs the cancer center's Office of Community Outreach and Engagement (COE), providing regional data to guide research priorities, facilitating research aligned with community needs, and leading implementation of evidence-based interventions in the area and beyond. Dr. Cohn works extensively with the community to address identified needs and provide support for activities that address cancer risk factors, screening, and survivorship, and convenes the cancer center's Community Advisory Council (CAC), which provides the cancer center recommendations and feedback on its work.
COE initiatives launched under Dr. Cohn’s leadership include the Pathways to Cancer Screening program, which provides technical assistance, outreach, navigation, and implementation of evidence-based practices to expand cancer screening in the catchment area, and the Community Grant Program, which supports local organizations in implementing the cancer center's priorities and CAC recommendations. Community grant recipients include the “Hitting Cancer Below the Belt” campaign, which reached over 15,000 households with colorectal cancer education, and programs at the Charlottesville Free Clinic that increased cancer screening among underserved populations.
A professor of public health sciences, Dr. Cohn brings to the role more than two decades of experience in cancer prevention, control, and outreach, with expertise in program planning and evaluation, implementation science, survey research, qualitative methods and community-engaged research. An experienced methodologist specializing in program planning and evaluation, qualitative and mixed methods, and community-based participatory research, her research focuses on cancer risk and communication, including the development and evaluation of digital tools to improve risk awareness, screening rates, and survivorship outcomes.
Dr. Cohn has served as principal investigator (PI) or co-investigator on numerous federally funded grants, including a rural Appalachian pharmacy-based tobacco risk initiative, and a colorectal cancer screening intervention in a federally qualified health center (FQHC). She is the PI of a Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute contract that established the Virginia FQHC Cancer Screening Collaborative to synergize communication among FQHCs, enhance navigation practices and build research capacity. She also serves on the Cancer Action Coalition of Virginia and its survivorship action group.
Dr. Cohn earned her master’s degree in educational psychology and her PhD in evaluation research at UVA.