Dr Bette Caan
Meet Bette, a co-investigator on CANCAN
Dr. Bette Caan is a senior research scientist and a nutritional epidemiologist at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research. She has been at the Division of Research since 1983. Dr. Caan holds a master's degree in nutrition from Columbia University, a master's degree in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate in public health nutrition from the University of California, Berkeley.
More about Bette
Dr. Caan directs a research program in the examination of modifiable lifestyle risk factors for the prevention and progression of cancer, with a focus on body composition and energy balance risk factors. Dr. Caan has expertise in the assessment of diet and body composition and the conduct of dietary intervention trials. She has authored or co-authored over 450 publications while a researcher at DOR. Her research publications cover a wide range of topics, primarily in nutrition and body size, cancer epidemiology, and women's health.
Dr. Caan is currently the Principal Investigator of several federally funded research projects including two large observational studies examining effects of body composition on breast and colorectal cancer outcomes; an intervention trial studying if strength training can reduce side effects of chemotherapy; and the LILAC Women's Health Initiative (WHI) Cancer Survivor Cohort, a cohort of 20,000 older women diagnosed with cancer during the WHI follow-up period currently being followed for recurrence and survival and survivorship outcomes. Dr. Caan has recently published several papers on the obesity paradox in cancer, advocating that body mass index (BMI) misclassifies patients with regard to adiposity; she is also in part responsible for identifying the obesity paradox. However, equally important in explaining the obesity paradox is that low muscle or sarcopenia is an important, underappreciated risk factor for poor survival, and that it is highly prevalent in normal-weight cancer patients.