Wayne R. Lawrence Appointed Stadtman Investigator
Wayne Lawrence, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., was appointed Earl Stadtman tenure-track investigator in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch in June 2026. Dr. Lawrence’s research has advanced
understanding of how economic and social factors, such as housing and neighborhood conditions, drive cancer disparities and premature mortality.
Dr. Lawrence joined DCEG as a postdoctoral fellow through the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program in 2020 and was promoted to research fellow in 2022. During his time as fellow, Dr. Lawrence led research that revealed higher cancer mortality among specific populations. His research has highlighted how circumstances in which individuals are born, grow, live, work, and age affect their health and quality of life.
As Earl Stadtman investigator, Dr. Lawrence will develop a novel, world-class research program focused on social determinants of health and factors that lead to differences in cancer burden.
With this program, Dr. Lawrence aims to investigate how neighborhood circumstances contribute to differences in cancer incidence and survivorship and examine—using real-world data—nationally emerging trends and area-level risk factors in cancer mortality. In addition, he will collaborate with researchers at DCEG’s Biostatistics Branch to identify critical periods across the life-course during which the neighborhood environment has the greatest influence on cancer risk. He will also use novel data linkages, including federal housing assistance data, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, and U.S. census data to better understand how the combination of housing instability and neighborhood socioeconomic conditions affect cancer outcomes. Dr. Lawrence also plays a key role in shaping the Connect for Cancer Prevention study, a prospective cohort seeking to enroll 200,000 adults to understand the causes and prevention of cancer. He founded and co-chairs the study’s Social Determinants of Health working group. In this role, he helps identify measures to include in the study related to socioenvironmental and economic conditions across the life-course that contribute to health. He spoke about this work and the need for measuring social risks in next-generation cancer cohorts at a 2025 workshop led by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Dr. Lawrence’s research will leverage existing data and create new NIH resources that could generate evidence toward better understanding the economic and social mechanisms that lead to differences in cancer risk and mortality. Findings from his research and collaborations have the potential to shape interventions that reduce suffering from cancer among underserved populations, including those in rural areas.
Dr. Lawrence earned his B.S. in health science at the University of Hartford and his M.P.H. in epidemiology at Georgia Southern University. He earned his Dr.P.H. in epidemiology
from State University of New York at Albany in 2020, where he was also a Presidential Doctoral Fellow at the Center for the Elimination of Health Disparities.