Disclaimer:  The following information is drawn from materials prepared by candidates for promotion to associate professor in one of the scholarship-requiring tracks (RS and CS).  It is intended to illustrate activities and materials that might support promotion.  In using these materials, please note the following:

               *The Provost (and, in some cases, the President) are the University officers authorized to approve promotions.  All levels of review below these officers are advisory.

               *Only Departments are empowered to propose promotions, and the Divisional Dean is charged with transmitting such proposals to the Provost or returning them to the Department.

               *The judgment of the Department, Dean, and Provost will therefore be critical to assessing qualification for promotion.

               *Materials considered by the Department, Dean, and Provost will also (and always) include confidential evaluations obtained from outside the University.  Materials considered by the Provost will include the confidential evaluations of the Dean and Department, and those considered by the Dean will include the confidential evaluations of the Department.

               *Thus, the following materials are ONLY PART of a complete proposal for promotion, whereas promotion is based on the ENTIRE proposal.   Therefore, it should not be assumed that a record comparable to that below will necessarily result in promotion, or that a record not comparable to that below will fail to result in promotion.  The Departmental Chair is likely to be the best source of advice as to whether promotion is feasible and, when it is not, what additional activity may result in qualification for promotion.

               *This document has been prepared as a tool for use by assistant professors in the Division of the Biological Sciences.  Other individuals who may find it informative are Department Chairmen, Section Heads, Committee Chairmen, senior faculty and potential recruits.  Its intent is to help guide individuals and their departments as they think about promotion to Professor.  This document is not intended to list the elements that every promotion proposal will be expected to address.  The following information is presented for information purposes only and is not intended to create any contract or agreement, and its contents are subject to addition, deletion, and change without prior notice.

Name

James Dignam, Ph.D.

 

Department of Primary Appointment:

Health Studies

 

Secondary appointments:

College

University of Chicago Cancer Research Center (Investigator)

 

Present track:

Research Scholar (Tenure)

 

Proposed rank:

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

 

Proposed track:

RESEARCH SCHOLAR (TENURE)

DEPARTMENT: What is the candidate's field or specialization?

Development and application of statistical methodology for biomedical research, with particular emphasis on cancer.

LAY SUMMARY:

Dr. Dignam is a biostatistician whose primary research has focused on cancer. He has devised and studied new statistical methods that address fundamental issues which are central to understanding the effects of treatment on cancer prognosis.  The results of his work are new understandings of racial disparities in cancer outcomes, new insights into the role of obesity on the effectiveness of treatment and subsequent cancer risk, as well as new statistical methods that improve our ability to estimate the effects of both treatment and patient characteristics on the progression of breast and colon cancers.

 

As a senior biostatistician for the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP), Dr. Dignam was primarily responsible for the experimental design and analysis, as well as playing a central role in the conduct and dissemination of results, from several major clinical trials in breast cancer.  These studies have established the current standards for use of radiotherapy, hormonal therapy, and chemotherapy treatment.  As a result of these efforts, he has been called upon to participate in national and international overviews, meta-analyses, and expert panel meetings to establish consensus for optimal breast cancer treatment.

 

Dr. Dignam was the first to recognize how large-scale clinical trials of cancer treatment constitute a unique opportunity to investigate hypotheses concerning causes of the disparities in breast cancer survival between African-Americans and Caucasians.  Using this insight, he demonstrated that when diagnosed at comparable stage of disease and when receiving similar treatment regimens, disparities in prognosis for cancer-related outcomes vanish.  Moreover, he established that adjuvant therapy is equally effective for African-American and Caucasian women.  Using the same concept, he was the first to show that in lymph node-negative, estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer, contrary to expectation, obesity was not associated with a material increase either in recurrence risk or the efficacy of tamoxifen therapy, but was associated with increased risk of new tumors in the other breast and overall mortality.  By contrast, Dignam was the first to definitively establish in colon cancer that obesity substantially elevates the risk of recurrence.

 

The latter discovery depends on statistical analyses that properly take account of a phenomenon known as Òcompeting risksÓ: patients who develop another kind of cancer before their primary cancer recurs will receive treatment for the new disease, which can interfere with the progression of the original cancer.  Similarly, patients who die of cardiac arrest prior to observable recurrence of their cancer provide some information about recurrence, but that information is incomplete.  The appropriate statistical analysis in such situations is delicate, and statistical tools are limited in scope.  Dr. Dignam has developed new statistical methods for the competing risks problems that increase the precision with which estimates can be made, particularly for relatively rare outcomes.  He has also developed new methods for a related scenario (the Òsemi-competing risksÓ problem) that makes it possible to address questions about tumor recurrence and metastasis at different possible sites.

 

In his educational and mentoring role, Dr. Dignam has taught a range courses from introductory level statistical methods for physicians pursuing research and academic medicine careers to more specialized topic courses for graduate students in statistics and other disciplines. He has advised and mentored students with backgrounds from medicine to mathematics. In his administrative capacity, through his membership in the Cancer Research CenterÕs Clinical Trials Review Committee and other oversight bodies, he has been responsible for oversight on the methodology and science of the clinical research program of the Cancer Center.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Awards and Honors

 

1991                         Inducted - Delta Omega, the National Public Health Honor Society

 

1987                         Monsanto Fellowship in Occupational Biostatistics, Department of Biostatistics, University of Pittsburgh

 

Professional Activities

Grant Reviews (2001-2007)

2006                      NIH Section Review Committee, Clinical Oncology – member – November 2006.

 

2005                         National Scientific Committee, Cancer Society of New Zealand - external reviewer – Differential Colon Cancer Survival by Ethnicity in New Zealand, January 2005.

 

2004                         Health Research Council of New Zealand - external reviewer – Differential Colon Cancer Survival by Ethnicity in New Zealand, November 2004.

 

2003                         Review Panel – NCI/NIA/NIEHS Center Grant Applications - Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities

 

Editorial

Editorial Board:

 

               Leukemia and Lymphoma – Associate Editor, Biostatistics

 

Refereeing – journals

 

BMC Public Health

Cancer

Cancer Detection and Prevention

Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Journal

Clinical Trials

Communications in Statistics - Theory and Methods

Computational Statistics and Data Analysis

Gynecologic Oncology

Health Policy

Journal of Clinical Oncology

Journal of the National Cancer Institute

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society – Series C

Journal of WomenÕs Health

Lifetime Data Analysis

Obesity Reviews

Statistics in Medicine

Statistica Sinica

The Lancet

 

 - books

 

Biomeasurement: Understanding, Analysing, and Communicating Data in the Biosciences, S. Hawkins, Oxford University Press 2005 – 2nd edition pre-review

 

Advisory Boards. Panels, etc

 

2007                   Invited speaker and panel member, National Cancer Institute workshop on ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). Feb 1-2, 2007, San Francisco, CA

 

2005-present  Member, Data and Safety Monitoring Committee, American College of Surgeons Oncology Group. Sponsor: The National Cancer Institute

 

2004-present  Member, Data and Safety Monitoring Committee, "A Phase III Randomized Study of Zolendronate Bisphosphonate Therapy for the Prevention of Bone Loss in Men with Prostate Cancer Receiving Long-Term Androgen Deprivation" Sponsor: The National Cancer Institute

 

2002                   Invited Panel Member – Conference on The Effects of Racialism on Cancer Care Delivery. Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities, National Cancer Institute, Harold Freeman, M.D., Director. January 10, 2002, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD.

 

2000                   Invited speaker and consensus statement contributor, National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Conference: Adjuvant Therapy for Breast Cancer, Bethesda, MD Nov 1-3, 2000

 

1995-present  Member and invited conference attendee (5-year cycles), Early Breast Cancer TrialistsÕ Collaborative Group. Oxford, UK

 

PRESENTATIONS

 

Presentations at Professional Conferences - invited

 

The NSABP Trial Evaluating Tamoxifen Duration for Node-Negative Breast Cancer. Biometrics Society ENAR Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA. March 30, 1998.

 

Racial/Ethnic Background and Benefits of Adjuvant Therapy for Breast Cancer. NIH Consensus Development Conference on Adjuvant Therapy for Breast Cancer. National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, November 1, 2000.

 

From Efficacy to Effectiveness: Translating Randomized Controlled Trial Findings into Treatment Standards. Data Research and Development Center Conference-Conceptualizing Scale-up: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Washington, D.C. November 4, 2003.

 

Race/Ethnicity and Outcomes after Breast Cancer: Examining Data from Randomized Clinical Trials. National Breast Cancer Coalition Annual Advocacy Training Conference. Washington, D.C., May 3, 2004.

 

Competing Risks Methods in the Analysis of Clinical Trials for Early Stage Cancer. American Statistical Association/ENAR/IMS Joint Statistical Meetings, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, August 11, 2004.

 

From Efficacy to Effectiveness: Translating Randomized Controlled Trial Findings into Treatment Standards. American Education Research Association. San Francisco, CA. April 8, 2006.

 

Evaluation of Prognostic Factors in DCIS. National Cancer Institute Workshop- DCIS:  Strategies to Integrate Tumor Biology and Population Sciences, San Francisco, CA, February 1-2, 2007.

 

Presentations at Professional Conferences - contributed

 

An Investigation of Methods for Bounding the Net Survival Function. Biometrics Society ENAR Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA. March 23, 1993.

 

Methods for Bounding Marginal Survival Distributions. American Statistical Association/ENAR/IMS Joint Statistical Meetings, San Francisco, CA. August 9, 1993.

 

Covariate Adjusted Cumulative Incidence Curves. Biometrics Society ENAR Annual Meeting, Cleveland, OH. April 10, 1994.

 

Monte‑Carlo Comparisons of Prospective and Retrospective Methods for Evaluating Biological Markers. Biometrics Society ENAR Annual Meeting, Birmingham, AL. March 23, 1995.

 

Prognosis among Black and White Women with Node-Negative Breast Cancer. American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, New York, NY. November 18, 1996.

 

Stopping a Clinical Trial When There is Evidence that the Treatment will Ultimately Not Prove Beneficial. Society for Clinical Trials/ International Society for Clinical Biostatistics Annual Meeting, Boston, MA. July 10, 1997.

 

Early Closure of a Clinical Trial When There is Evidence that the Treatment will Ultimately Not Prove Beneficial: Frequentist and Bayesian Perspectives. American Statistical Association/ENAR/IMS Joint Statistical Meetings, Anaheim, CA. August 11, 1997.

 

Controlled Clinical Trials in Breast Cancer: The NSABP Experience. Controlled Clinical Trials in Ovarian and Breast Cancer. Istituto Nazionale per lo Studio e la Cura Dei Tumori, Milan, Italy, March 26, 1999.

 

Statistical Explorations into Long-Term Tamoxifen Efficacy for the Treatment of Early Breast Cancer. American Statistical Association/ENAR/IMS Joint Statistical Meetings, Baltimore, MD, August 8, 1999.

 

Relationship of Body Mass Index to Outcomes after Lymph Node-Negative, Estrogen Receptor Positive Breast Cancer. 24th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, San Antonio, TX, December 12, 2001.

 

Mammographic Density and Obesity as Risk Factors for Invasive Breast Cancer Following Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS). Primary Therapy of Early Breast Cancer – 8th International Conference, St Gallen, Switzerland, March 13, 2003.

 

Effect of Body Mass Index on Outcomes in Patients with Dukes B and C Colon Cancer: An Analysis of NSABP Randomized Trials. American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting. Orlando, FL, May 17, 2005.

 

Choice of Hypothesis Tests in the Analysis of Competing Risks in Clinical Trials. Society for Clinical Trials Annual Meeting, Portland, OR, May 24, 2005.

 

Multi-Resolution Hazard Estimation for the Study of Time-Dependent Failure Patterns in Early Stage Breast Cancer. Valencia/ISBA 8th World Meeting on Bayesian Statistics, Benidorm, Spain, June 1, 2006.

 

Time-dependent patterns of recurrence after early stage breast cancer: Preliminary observations and methodological issues. 2007 ASCO Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, June 2, 2007.

 

Presentations at Universities and Research Institutes (2001-2007)

 

Obesity and Outcomes After Early Breast Cancer. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago. February 8, 2002 (invited).

 

Competing Risks Methods in the Analysis of Clinical Cancer Studies. Department of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University Medical School. April 30, 2003 (invited).

 

Competing Risks Analysis of Clinical Trials for Early Stage Cancer. Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin – Madison. November 14, 2003 (invited).

 

Obesity and Breast Cancer Prognosis. Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, Oakland, CA, October 20, 2005 (invited).

 

Race/Ethnicity and Outcomes after Cancer. Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Medical School, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH October 26, 2006 (invited Grand Rounds Lecture).