Early-Onset Cancer: Improved Detection & Environmental Exposures
Sponsored by the Abramson Cancer Center (ACC) & Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology (CEET)
Friday, April 10, 2026 | 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM | 3600 Civic Center Boulevard, Room 11-102AB
Join us for a special forum featuring two powerful advocates impacted by early‑onset cancer, who will briefly share aspects of their journeys. Their remarks will be followed by scientific presentations from leading experts studying early‑onset cancer, as well as a facilitated discussion.
REGISTRATION: Registration will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis as seating is limited. Click here to register. Registration deadline: Friday, April 3, 2026.
AGENDA
| 10:00 – 10:05 | Welcome Remarks |
| 10:05 – 10:10 | Carmen E. Guerra, MD, MSCE, FACP Director, Center for Community Outreach & Engagement, ACC |
| 10:10 – 10:20 | Michael Hu Research Patient Advocate |
| 10:20 – 10:30 | Kim Hall Jackson Survivor and Advocate |
| 10:30 – 10:45 | Environmental Chemicals and Breast Cancer: What’s the Evidence? Julia Brody, PhD Senior Scientist and Executive Director Emeritus, Silent Spring Institute |
| 10:45 – 11:00 | Ultraprocessed Foods as an Emerging Risk Factor for Early Onset Colorectal Cancer Andrew T. Chan, MD, MPH Daniel K. Podolsky Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Director of Epidemiology Cancer Center, Massachusetts General Hospital |
| 11:00 – 11:15 | Early-Onset Cancer and the Exposome: The Intersection of Social and Environmental Stressors Kristen Malecki, MPH, PhD Professor, Division Director; Co-Lead, Cancer Prevention and Control, University of Illinois Cancer Center, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences |
| 11:15 – 12:00 | Panel Discussion/Q&A Moderator: Marilyn Howarth, MD, FACOEM Director, Community Engagement Core, CEET |
MEET THE SPEAKERS
Kim Hall Jackson
Kim Hall Jackson, proprietor of KHJ Enterprise, LLC is a certified meeting planner and events professional with over 20 years of experience in hospitality, customer service, event production and management. This promising career was almost cut short at the age of 45, when Kim was diagnosed with Stage III Colorectal Cancer. Through immense support from family, friends, and health professionals, Kim emerged from this fight victorious and cancer-free.
Today, Kim Hall Jackson has become a leading colorectal cancer advocate, and a strong voice extolling the need for cancer screenings. Kim has been seen on The Today Show with Kathy Lee and Hoda Kotb in a segment entitled “Survivor: There’s hope to beat Colon Cancer.” She was a guest on Colon Conversations with Dr. J. Stephen Blake on WURD 900AM in Philadelphia, and was featured as Miss June 2012 in the Colon Club’s Colon dar, a calendar of colorectal cancer survivors under the age of 50. Kim presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Science of Cancer Health Disparities Conference in San Antonio, TX and the AACR Advocacy Partnership Primer in Philadelphia PA.
Michael Hu
Michael Hu is a lung cancer survivor (diagnosed in March 2022) and a research patient advocate focused on lung cancer treatment advancement and awareness. His professional experience spans telecommunications project management, human-rights nonprofit leadership, and biomedical research. Michael lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two young children. He shares his experience and perspective to support others and help accelerate new therapies and better outcomes. He is an active member of ALK Positive Inc., advancing patient-focused research and helping strengthen the community. Outside of advocacy, Michael enjoys creating lasting memories with family and friends.
Julia Brody, PhD
Dr. Julia Brody is Senior Scientist and Executive Director Emeritus at Silent Spring Institute, a scientific research organization that studies environmental chemicals and breast cancer. Recently, she was part of a team that used US EPA data to identify 900 chemicals, many of them in consumer products and the environment, that have biological characteristics linked to breast cancer. Dr. Brody is the author of several major reviews of epidemiological studies of environmental chemicals and breast cancer. Her current research focuses on reporting back to people in environmental health studies on their own chemical exposures. She developed the Digital Exposure Report-Back Interface (DERBI), a web-based application for returning personalized reports in a meaningful context. Her interest in returning exposure results grew out of the Cape Cod Breast Cancer and Environment Study, an investigation of higher incidence in the region. The study tested for 87 endocrine disrupting compounds in participants’ homes and was the first to reveal that consumer products and indoor environments are a major source of exposure. Dr. Brody earned her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin.
Andrew T. Chan, MD, MPH
Dr. Chan is a gastroenterologist, the Daniel K. Podolsky Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. Through work spanning population epidemiology to clinical trials, Dr. Chan’s research focuses on the prevention, interception, and treatment of gastrointestinal cancers. He is the Team Lead for the Stand Up to Cancer Gastric Cancer Interception Team, co-Team Lead for the Cancer Grand Challenges Early-Onset Cancer Team (PROSPECT) co-funded by Cancer Research UK and the NCI, an NCI Outstanding Investigator, an American Cancer Society (ACS) Professor and member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and Association of American Physicians. He is also past Clinical Research Councillor of the American Gastroenterological Association and past chair of the Population Sciences Working Group of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Kristen Malecki, MPH, PhD
Dr. Malecki is a Professor and Division Director for Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) School of Public Health. She has a PhD in Environmental Epidemiology and Health Policy and a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her current translational environmental health research uses a molecular biology approach to examine combined chemical (air pollution, water pollution), physical, and social stressors, and their influence on adult chronic disease, aging, and health disparities including cancer. She applies emerging multi-omic tools including epigenetics, transcriptomics, and the microbiome to identify interim biomarkers of exposure and response to improve understanding of the biological mechanisms linking environmental stressors across the life-course to persistent health disparities. Dr. Malecki’s work is grounded in communities and uses community-engaged approaches to population and environmental health sciences research. Her ongoing work is funded by several NIH institutions, and she is a principal investigator for the NCI funded coordinating center for the new Cohorts for Environmental Exposures and Cancer Consortium.
