Geographic Management of Cancer Health Disparities Program

GMaP Members

If you would like to become a member, please contact the GMaP Region 3 Regional Coordinating Director, Shoshana Adler Jaffe, at 505-272-6504 or by e-mail.

GMaP members work together on cancer treatment research to find the differences in cancer occurrences and cancer types.

Download GMaP Region 3 Member Profiles

GMaP Member Profile

Thank you for participating in GMaP Region 3! Our network consists of more than 600 amazing cancer and cancer health disparities (CHD) researchers from across our seven state region. To fully engage researchers in our network, develop relevant resources, and enhance opportunities for students, investigators, and faculty interested in cancer and CHD education, research and training, we are gathering up-to-date information from each of our members.

Please take a few minutes to fill in your most current contact information, cancer and CHD research foci, and names of your on-going research projects and their funding sources. If readily available, we would also appreciate links to or uploads of:

• Recent photo;
• Brief biographical statement; and/or
• NIH biosketch

The survey will take about 5 minutes. Information you provide will be imported into an on-line searchable data table on our GMaP Region 3 website to facilitate research collaborations, cross institutional researcher partnerships, and mentor/mentee connections. Thank you for helping us build a robust and relevant research network to enhance cancer and CHD research.

Fill out the Member Survey

Shoshana Adler Jaffe, MPH

Regional Coordinating Director
GMaP Region 3
505-272-6504
E-mail Shoshana Adler Jaffe

Ms. Jaffe began working for the UNMCCC in 2018 as a research assistant while earning her MPH from the UNM College of Population Health. Shoshana completed an epidemiology concentration within the MPH program.

Ms. Jaffe has experience with data analysis and with developing manuscripts and presentations concerning notable research findings. Ms. Jaffe has worked with STATA, Excel, SEER*Stat, and REDCap to collect, process, and analyze data. She also has experience in conducting semi-structured interviews and in study participant recruitment. While earning her bachelor's degree in biology at UNM, Ms. Jaffe conducted research in both plant physiology and human rights.

Miria Kano, PhD

Assistant Professor Division of Epidemiology
Biostatistics and Preventive Medicine Department of Internal Medicine
UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center

505-925-1115
E-mail Dr. Kano 

Miria Kano, PhD is a medical anthropologist/research investigator in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Dr. Kano’s previous work focused on Jewish women’s rabbinic leadership, transforming patterns of religious participation, and community involvement in the 21st Century United States. Dr. Kano combines her interests in qualitative research methods including life history/life story elicitation, ethnography, and narrative and systems analyses in mixed methods medical research on topics such as racial/ethnic, gender and socioeconomic bias in medical student medical decision making, endometrial cancer survivorship and primary care, and public mental health and substance use service delivery and uptake among underrepresented populations. Her most recent research, funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, facilitates patient and provider collaborations for the purpose of developing culturally- and contextually-relevant patient and provider education materials and clinic level interventions to reduce health and healthcare disparities experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning individuals who are ethnic minorities, rural residents, or those with socioeconomic and/or educational challenges across the state of New Mexico.

Andrew L. Sussman, PhD, MCRP

Director, Behavioral Measurement & Population Sciences Shared Resource
Department of Family and Community Medicine
MSC09 5040
505-272-4077

E-mail Dr. Sussman 

Andrew L. Sussman, PhD, MCRP, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and Director of the Behavioral Measurement and Population Sciences Shared Resource at the University of New Mexico Cancer Center. He received both his Ph.D. (Cultural Anthropology) and M.C.R.P. (Community and Regional Planning) at the University of New Mexico. He completed post-doctoral training in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Dr. Sussman has designed and led numerous qualitative and mixed method research studies. His research focuses on primary health care service delivery and patient-provider counseling dynamics among health disparity populations in New Mexico. He has conducted much of this work through RIOS Net, a primary care practice-based research network located in the Department of Family and Community Medicine for which he now serves as the Director. Through RIOS Net, he has developed and received institutional and extramural funding to conduct research in a range of topical areas including cancer prevention, substance use disorders, complementary and alternative medicine and obesity/diabetes prevention. The majority of this research has been conducted in outpatient primary care and community settings throughout New Mexico, mostly in predominantly Hispanic and American Indian tribal communities. Given this focus, he has extensive experience in participatory and community engaged approaches to research. He has over 30 publications in these research areas and also teaches qualitative research design in the Master of Science in Biomedical Science Program.

Shiraz Mishra, MBBS, PhD

Professor, Departments of Pediatrics and Family and Community Medicine
505-925-6085
E-mail Dr. Mishra 

Shiraz Mishra, MD, PhD has a background in public health, specifically in the areas of health services and community-based chronic disease prevention/health promotion interventions. His main research interests and achievements have been in the characterization of individual, inter-personal, organizational/community, and societal risk factors leading to disparities in health and in access to and utilization of preventive services. He has been involved in the design, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of theoretically guided community-based prevention and control interventions to reduce disparities in risk factors and to enhance health and well-being. For these research studies, he has incorporated mixed methods, such as quantitative survey methods, and qualitative focus groups and semi-structured interviews. Dr. Mishra’s research has provided descriptive and research-tested inferential evidence for chronic disease prevention interventions. The research has utilized the socio-ecological and social determinants frameworks for health and has been conducted in collaboration with members of diverse ethnic/racial populations (i.e., Hispanics and African Americans) and with indigenous populations (i.e., American Samoans), those residing in rural communities, and hard-to-reach populations (i.e., migrant farm workers) in the United States and internationally. More recently, he conducted two comprehensive systematic reviews (and meta-analyses) of the literature documenting the effects of exercise interventions on health-related quality of life among cancer survivors undergoing active treatment and in the post-treatment phase. His research has incorporated strategies to inform policy makers and stakeholders about the public health basis for policies that promote chronic disease prevention and the creation of social environments that promote social norms for health promoting behaviors. Dr. Mishra is a Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Family and Community Medicine. He serves as co-Leader of the Community Engagement and Research Component of the UNM Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC). He is also the Director of the Masters of Science in Clinical Research degree program and is the Course Director for the “Research Design” course.

Tawny Wilson Boyce, MS, MPH

Biostatistician, Biostatistics Shared Resource
Data Manager, Behavioral Measurement & Population Sciences Shared Resource
Cancer Research and Treatment Center
MSC07 4025
505-272-9578

E-mail Tawny Boyce 

Tawny Boyce splits her time between the Biostatistics Shared Resource and the Behavioral Measurement and Population Sciences Shared Resource at University of New Mexico Cancer Center. In 2010, she earned a dual Master’s degree from Tufts University focusing on epidemiology, biostatistics and nutrition. She has prior experience as an epidemiologist/biostatistician at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center. She has experience with large population datasets used to illustrate health disparities in chronic conditions and health behaviors, including people with disabilities and older adults. Ms. Boyce also has knowledge of data management and analysis of longitudinal observational clinical data for use in publications and presentations for a wide range of audiences. She has used clinical, behavioral, and quality of life data to assess health outcomes and promote disease prevention across the lifespan.

Robin Johnston

Marketing Manager
UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center
E-mail Robin Johnston

Robin Johnston manages the representation of the UNM Cancer Center to the community. This includes the general public, but also niche communications such as research survey collateral and program newsletters. Coming from a healthcare background of 22 years of working in internal communication and marketing departments, her materials and work have garnered more than 20 awards from the NM Public Relations Society of America as well as awards from the NM Advertising Federation, Optimas Vision Award, and the Excellence in Quality Service national award. Johnston is a proud alumni of the University of New Mexico with a focus in communications, English and art history.

For more information about collaborating with GMaP Region 3 scientists, please contact:

Shoshana Adler Jaffe
Regional Coordinating Director
GMaP Region 3
Comprehensive Cancer Center
University of New Mexico