Julie Palmer

Julie Palmer is Professor of Epidemiology in the Boston University School of Public Health and the Karin Grunebaum Cancer Research Professor in the Department of Medicine, Section of Hematology and Medical Oncology, at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. She serves as Director of the Slone Epidemiology Center and Co-Director of the BU-BMC Cancer Center. Palmer earned her ScD in Epidemiology from Harvard University, MPH in Epidemiology from Boston University, BS in Nursing from Boston University, and BA in Religious Studies from Brown University. She joined the Slone Epidemiology Center and the Department of Epidemiology faculty after receiving her doctorate from Harvard. In 2019, she was appointed Director of the Slone Epidemiology Center and named the Karin Grunebaum Cancer Research Professor. She has held leadership roles including interim Director of the BU-BMC Cancer Center.

A cancer epidemiologist, Palmer's research focuses on cancer early detection, etiology, and survivorship, with particular emphasis on the disproportionately high incidence of hormone receptor-negative breast cancer among U.S. Black women, racial disparities in breast cancer mortality, risk prediction models tailored for Black women, childbearing patterns related to estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer, interrelationships of type 2 diabetes, obesity, and inflammation with breast cancer risk, and somatic mutations, epigenetics, and gene expression profiles in breast tumors from African American women. She is a founding leader and principal investigator of the Black Women’s Health Study, a prospective cohort of 59,000 self-identified Black women enrolled in 1995 and followed biennially. Her influential publications include "Risk of COVID-19 among front-line health-care workers and the general community: a prospective cohort study" (The Lancet Public Health, 2020), "Cancer health disparities in racial/ethnic minorities in the United States" (British Journal of Cancer, 2021), "A population-based study of genes previously implicated in breast cancer" (New England Journal of Medicine, 2021), and "Sugar-sweetened beverages and incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in African American women" (Archives of Internal Medicine, 2008). Palmer has received the AACR Distinguished Lectureship on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities (2017), Komen Scholar designation (since 2018), and Breast Cancer Research Foundation Investigator award (since 2023). She chaired the NIH Cancer, Cardiovascular, and Sleep Epidemiology Study Section (2015-2017) and co-chaired a Working Group for the National Cancer Advisory Board (NCI, 2018-2019). Her work has advanced understanding of cancer disparities and informed risk assessment tools for Black women.