Hormuzd Katki Awarded NIH Scientific Tenure
, by DCEG Staff
Hormuzd Katki
Hormuzd A. Katki, Ph.D., was recently awarded scientific tenure by the NIH. Dr. Katki develops and applies quantitative methods to identify and answer the most pressing questions in cancer epidemiology, and seeks to translate these findings into tools for the prevention and early detection of cancer in individuals and populations.
Dr. Katki has been an integral part of the effort to provide the epidemiologic evidence that contributed to new cervical cancer screening guidelines. He led a team that calculated cervical cancer risks over time for women with different combinations of HPV, Pap, and biopsy test results, using data on 1.4 million women at Kaiser Permanente Northern California. The results of this effort provided risk information to ensure “equal management of women at equal risk of cancer.”
In a study of lung cancer screening, Dr. Katki and colleagues evaluated the use of low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) and concluded that the balance of benefits and harms strongly depends on an individual’s pre-screening risk of lung cancer death. This proof-of-principle demonstrates the superiority of utilizing individual-level risk of lung cancer death over more coarse age/smoking history criteria, and could improve the efficiency of LDCT screening programs by increasing the ratio of cases per number screened, and reducing the number of false positives.