Joanne Watters Elena, PhD, MPH

Special Volunteer
Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Branch, Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program

Email: elenajw@mail.nih.gov

Degrees

• PhD - Nutritional Epidemiology, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health
• MPH - Epidemiology, The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• BS - Biology, College of William and Mary

Biography

Joanne Elena, PhD, MPH, is a special volunteer in the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Branch of the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Until 2023, she was a program director who was responsible for developing, managing, and promoting a research portfolio of grants focused on diet and lifestyle factors that influence cancer progression, subsequent primary cancers, recurrence, and survival. She was also involved in optimizing the use and design of cohort studies, incorporating new technologies to assess exposures and outcomes, and maximizing the use of existing data. She also managed several funding announcements that supported infrastructure needs for large cohort studies. She served as the scientific director for NCI’s Cohort Consortium and EGRP’s co-coordinator for cohort activities.

Dr. Elena completed her PhD in nutritional epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her MPH at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Select Publications

See listings of articles and other publications authored by Dr. Elena in PubMed.