Judy Rees, BM BCh, MPH, PhD

Dr. Judy Rees is a physician-epidemiologist and the Principal Investigator of the Cancer Registry of Greater California.

After graduating with a degree in medicine from Oxford University in the United Kingdom, Dr Rees completed a three-year general practice residency in England followed by a Masters in Public Health and a PhD in Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley while working for the California Emerging Infections Program.

Dr Rees joined the CRGC from the Dartmouth Cancer Center and the Department of Epidemiology at the Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College. She served as the Director of the New Hampshire State Cancer Registry from 2004 to 2024, overseeing a small but highly effective team that achieved NAACCR gold certification for data quality consistently since diagnosis year 2004. For the Dartmouth Cancer Center, as the Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement, Dr Rees led efforts to work with community partners to reduce the burden of cancer in the Cancer Center catchment area of New Hampshire and Vermont. She is particularly interested in the use of population data to identify strategies to improve population health and reduce the burden of cancer.

Dr Rees’ research interests include investigating the roles of environmental, infrastructural and social risk factors in cancer occurrence and survival outcomes. Examples of her ongoing research include a community-engaged study to design, optimize and evaluate an educational intervention to promote home radon testing, and a feasibility study to investigate an excess of kidney cancer in Merrimack Town, New Hampshire. For many years she taught biostatistics and epidemiology to first year medical students at the Geisel School of Medicine, and has enjoyed mentoring researchers at all stages of the educational journey.