Student Receives Two Predoctoral Fellowships for Dissertation.

 Vanessa Merker, a PhD candidate in Health Services Research in the Department of Health Law, Policy & Management, has received two awards to support her doctoral research on diagnostic delay and provision of healthcare to patients with schwannomatosis. Schwannomatosis is one of the neurofibromatoses (NF), a group of genetic disorders that cause multiple tumors to develop around patients’ nerves.

The Children’s Tumor Foundation, a national non-profit dedicated to funding NF research and providing support and education to patients and their families, selected Merker for a Young Investigator Award. The competitive, two-year grant is awarded to pre- and postdoctoral researchers in order to encourage NF research and support investigators’ early career development.

Merker was also selected as a pre-doctoral fellow in the Program in Cancer Outcomes Research Training (PCORT) at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. The two-year, interdisciplinary research fellowship program is funded by a National Cancer Institute training grant.

In the health law, policy & management department, Merker is working with A. Rani Elwy, Martin Charns, and Mark Meterko.