Promoting Healthy Lifestyles to Reduce the Risk of Cancer will be the focus of the President's Cancer Panel meeting Monday, September 11, 2006. The Masonic Cancer Center will host the all-day, fact-finding meeting in Room 450 of the Masonic Cancer Research Building.

The meeting is open to the public and you do not need to register to attend.

The panel will hear testimony from invited participants and the public on how obesity, physical activity, and nutrition impact cancer risk. It will explore both current research and existing knowledge gaps in these areas, as well as programs relevant to healthy lifestyles and cancer risk reduction.

Robert Jeffery, Ph.D.

Cancer Center member Robert Jeffery, Ph.D., who directs the University's Obesity Prevention Center, will be among a dozen experts from across the country invited to give testimony before the panel. Cancer Center Director John Kersey, M.D., will give the welcome.

The poster and draft agenda for the meeting will be posted at the Masonic Cancer Center and throughout the University where other cancer researchers and people who may wish to attend this meeting work. As the meeting agenda and other details become finalized, the information will be disseminated through Update, the Web site, and other communications.

The President's Cancer Panel was established with the passage by the U.S. Congress of the 1971 Cancer Act. The current panel was appointed by President Bush to advise him on matters about cancer. The chair and spokesperson for the panel and for the September 11 meeting is LaSalle Leffall, Jr., M.D., professor of surgery at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C.

Media Contact: Mary Lawson, Public Relations Director, Masonic Cancer Center, 612-624-6165, 612-363-6971 (cell), mlawson@umn.edu.