Heather Eliassen

doctor, Brigham & Women's Hospital

Dr. Eliassen's research focuses on the associations between lifestyle factors, endogenous hormones, and the risk of breast cancer. She is interested in lifestyle factors that may reduce the risk of breast cancer, either via a hormonal pathway or independently. Utilizing data from the Nurses' Health Study cohort, she has examined the relations of statin lipid-lowering drugs, tubal sterilization, and weight change with the risk of breast cancer. Her interests in hormones include the correlations between lifestyle factors and hormone levels and the associations between concentrations of hormones and the risk of breast cancer among both premenopausal and postmenopausal women. She is a co-investigator on sub-cohorts within Nurses Health Study I and II that include blood samples from over 60,000 women, and she has used these data to examine hormonal biomarkers among both premenopausal and postmenopausal women. Her interests in lifestyle factors and biomarkers extend to include dietary factors and she has examined the validation of dietary assessments and the correlations between plasma nutrients and reported intake within the Healthy Directions behavioral intervention studies designed to implement cancer prevention strategies.