Joan Walker, MD

Assoc. Director of Diversity Equity and Inclusion for the NCI Designated Stephenson Cancer Center, George Lynn Cross Research Professor, Louise and Clay Bennett Chair in Cancer, Professor of Gynecology Oncology

Dr. Walker is the Associate Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the Stephenson Cancer Center.  This honor stems from her role as Co-PI of the NRG Oncology NCORP Research Base, to lead the Cancer Prevention and Control clinical trials, Health Disparities interventions, and Cancer Care Delivery Research.  She has advocated for Diversity in the NRG Oncology NCTN and NCORP NCI programs through the initiation of an Under-Represented Minority Mentored Clinical Trials two-year program to train the future leaders of the group. The whole OU and OUHSC campuses are engaged in diversity programs, mentorship training for faculty and pairing early investigators with mentors.

Dr. Walker’s experience includes running two large clinical trials with NCI at OUHSC on cervical cytology/HPV management (ALTS and SUCCEED) and also many clinical trials with GOG and NRG Oncology.  She is a George Lynn Cross Research Professor and hold the Louise and Clay Bennett Endowed Chair in Cancer Prevention. Within the NCI Designated Stephenson Cancer Center (SCC), she co-leads the Gynecologic Cancers (GC) Program, and the NCI Lead Academic Sites NCTN grant.  She is the co-PI conducting a 2200 patient salpingectomy study in premenopausal BRCA 1 mutation carriers for ovarian cancer prevention in the premenopausal women after childbearing with cancer incidence as the primary endpoint. She has previously led the Society of Gynecology Oncology to produce ovarian cancer prevention guidelines to improve hereditary cancer mutation testing and risk reducing interventions resulting in the publication in the journal Cancer.