Amy Knudsen, Ph.D.


Investigator
Institute for Technology Assessment, Mass General Research Institute
Assistant Professor of Radiology
Harvard Medical School
colonography computed tomographic; colonoscopy; colorectal cancer; colorectal neoplasms; decision analysis; direct service costs; duodenal neoplasms; early detection of cancer; health care costs; life expectancy; mass screening; neoplasms; obesity; occult blood; simrc

Dr. Knudsen received a BS with Distinction in policy analysis from Cornell University and a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University. While at Harvard, Amy was the recipient of a Cancer Prevention Training Grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from Harvard University. She completed a NCI-funded post-doctoral fellowship in the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Program in Cancer Outcomes Research Training (PCORT). She has worked for health-economics consulting firms where she developed decision-analytic models to assess the lifetime health and economic consequences of obesity and the benefits of weight loss.

Dr. Knudsen’s career goal is to improve cancer outcomes by identifying the most effective and cost-effective options for prevention, screening, and treatment. Her research focuses on the use of disease simulation models to inform cancer control policies. Her work to date has focused on colorectal cancer, the second most common cause of cancer death in the US. She developed and programmed a computer model, SimCRC, that simulates the natural history of colorectal cancer among the US population over time and incorporates the effects of prevention, screening, and treatment interventions. SimCRC has been used to inform both state- and national screening coverage decisions and guidelines. Dr. Knudsen’s research aims to evaluate how existing and emerging screening methodologies can best be used to minimize the burden of colorectal cancer.