Holly Etchegary

Teaching

Course Chair: Med 6268 (Fall semester); Med 6255 (Winter semester)

My primary teaching responsibilities are in the Diploma and thesis-based graduate programs of Clinical Epidemiology where I teach courses focused on clinical research design and analysis, as well as patient-oriented research and practice. I also contribute to other core courses (e.g., epidemiology) and graduate seminars. I am an active contributor to both the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Medical School curriculum at Memorial through research mentoring. I regularly supervise graduate students at both the Masters and PhD levels, in addition to undergraduate medical students and medical residents, across a variety of health research areas. I am always happy to hear from students with an interest in my research areas.

Research interests and current projects

I am an Interdisciplinary Scientist. As such, my scholarly activity is highly interdisciplinary and focuses broadly on GE3LS (Genetics, Ethical, Environmental, Economic, Legal and Social Issues), the psychosocial impact of inherited disorders, patient and public engagement with genomics, as well as genomics health services research. I am often invited to join national research teams to contribute a missing perspective (typically psychosocial GE3LS and more recently, expertise in patient oriented research).

The research on which I am currently working is twofold. One stream is focused on precision oncology. For example, I am currently co-leading a CIHR knowledge synthesis grant exploring alternative models of genomics service delivery and co-leading the psychosocial arm of a large national clinical trial exploring the potential of circulating cell free tumor DNA for earlier cancer detection in people with hereditary cancer syndromes across Canada. Locally, I work with a team of providers and patient partners who are committed to improving care delivery and outcomes for families affected by hereditary cancers in NL.

Another stream of my work is health services research across several areas, including a better understanding of the lived experience of cancer (including hereditary cancers), with a view to improving supportive and survivorship care; the other in implementation science work evaluating the implementation of family care teams in NL.

Education and Training:

2005 PhD, Social/Health Psychology, Memorial University

2005-2007 Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Ottawa and National Institute of Population Health, Ottawa, ON

Awards and Designations

Designated and invited Expert Collection Editor, 2026, ELSIhub collections, National Human Genome Research Institute, managed by teams at Stanford and Columbia Universities, USA. https://doi.org/10.25936/nds2-t848

President’s Award for Public Engagement, Memorial University, 2024

Designated a ‘Top Scholar’ in Precision Medicine, 2024

Abstract award, American Society of Human Genetics meeting, 2023 (chosen in the top 10% of all abstracts at this annual seminal meeting)

External links to publications:

PubMed

Google Scholar

ResearchGate