Mary Beth Terry
- Mailman School of Public Health
- Professor of Epidemiology (in Environmental Health Sciences)
Mary Beth Terry, PhD, focuses her research on cancer prevention with a specific focus on breast cancer. She is a cancer epidemiologist with over 20 years of leading studies of cancer etiology specifically focused on the role of genetics, epigenetics, and other biomarkers play in modifying the effects of environmental exposures. Dr. Terry currently leads NIH grants funded through the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences that focus on following cancer risk within family-based cohorts focused on studying environmental exposures during key windows of breast cancer susceptibility. She is also leading prospective studies to validate and extend breast cancer risk assessment models. She is also funded through the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Dr. Terry has authored or co-authored over 300 scientific publications. Her more recent work supports that environmental exposures and biomarkers are associated with modifying risk even within high risk families. Her work also focuses on measuring risk factors for mammographic density, a strong intermediate marker of breast cancer. In addition to her doctorate in epidemiology, Dr. Terry has a Master’s degree in economics and previously worked as an econometrician and program evaluator for a number of government-sponsored programs. Dr. Terry teaches introductory and advanced epidemiologic methods.