Research Program: Prevention & Etiology
Professor, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health

trc@cccs.umn.edu
612-626-1494 — office

Dr. Church received his Ph.D. degree in biostatistics from the University of Minnesota in 1984. Although he has worked in both industry and academe, and on various health-related topics, his main interest is in cancer prevention and control.

Research Interests

Dr. Church is interested in early detection by screening for and prevention of cancer. His earlier work demonstrated the effectiveness of using fecal occult blood testing (FOBT) to detect early colorectal cancer both to reduce mortality and to prevent the disease. Recent projects are the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial (PLCO), looking at screening for those four sites in a multicenter randomized study; the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST), a study comparing the mortality effects of screening by chest x-ray vs. spiral computed tomography (CT); the National Colonoscopy Screening Trial (aka National Colonoscopy Study), comparing FOBT screening to colonoscopy in colorectal cancer; the Molecular Epidemiology of Prostate Carcinogenesis, an etiologic case-control study; the Colorectal Chemoprevention with Calcium and Vitamin D study, looking at chemoprevention of new polyps among patients with previous polyps; the Colorectal Cancer Family Registry, an international collaboration that has registered over 8,000 families; and the Tobacco Biomarker Studies I and II, part of the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC), looking at biomarkers of tobacco carcinogens and their causal role in lung cancer.

Dr. Church also researches methods for clinical trials and epidemiologic studies, including estimating screening parameters from randomized and observational studies, identifying, assessing and adjusting for early detection bias in case-control and cohort studies, selection effects and adjustment in clinical trial analysis, and Bayesian approaches to trial design.

Selected Publications

Church TR, Mandel JS. (2008) "Cancer Screening: Gastrointestinal Cancers" in Cancer: Principles and Practices of Oncology, volume one, chapter 33.2. DeVita VT, Lawrence TS, Rosenberg SA, editors, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Baltimore, MD.

Pinsky PF, Miller A, Kramer BS, Church T, Reding D, Prorok P, Gelmann E, Schoen RE, Buys S, Hayes RB, Berg CD. (2007) "Evidence of a healthy volunteer effect in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial." American Journal of Epidemiology 165(8): 874-81.

Church TR. (2006) "Prostate-specific antigen and prostate cancer prognosis" Journal of the National Cancer Institute 98(21):1509-10.

Moslehi R, Chatterjee N, Church TR, Chen J, Yeager M, Weissfeld J, Hein DW, Hayes RB. (2006) "Cigarette smoking, N-acetyltransferase genes and the risk of advanced colorectal adenoma." Pharmacogenomics 7(6):819-26.

Church TR. (2006) "Screening for colorectal cancer by colonoscopy: Adding to the evidence." Journal of the American Medical Association 295(20): 2411-12.

Peters U, Chatterjee N, Church TR, Mayo C, Stürup S, Foster CB, Schatzkin A, Hayes RB. (2006) "High serum selenium and reduced risk of advanced colorectal adenoma in a colorectal early detection program." Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention 15(2): 315-20.

Church TR. (2005) "Offering patients colorectal cancer screening." Journal of the National Cancer Institute 97(5): 328-9.

Church TR, Yeazel MW, Jones RM, Kochevar LK, Watt GD, Mongin SJ, Cordes JE, Engelhard D. (2004) "A randomized trial of direct mailing of fecal occult blood tests to increase colorectal cancer screening" Journal of the National Cancer Institute 96:770-80.

Church TR, for the National Lung Screening Trial Executive Committee. (2003) "Chest Radiography as the Comparison for Spiral CT in the National Lung Screening Trial" Academic Radiology 10(6):713-715.

Mandel JS, Church TR, Bond JH, Ederer F, Geisser MS, Mongin SJ, Snover DC, Schuman LM. (2000). "The Effect of Fecal Occult Blood Screening on the Incidence of Colorectal Cancer" New England Journal of Medicine 343(22):1603-1607.

Church TR. (1999) "A Novel Form of Ascertainment Bias in Case-control Studies of Cancer Screening" Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 52:837-847.

Mandel JS, Church TR, Ederer F, Bond JH. (1999) "The Effectiveness of Biennial Screening for Fecal-Occult Blood in Reducing Colorectal Cancer Mortality" Journal of the National Cancer Institute 91:434-437.

Church TR, Ederer F, Mandel JS. (1997) "Fecal Occult Blood Screening in the Minnesota Study: Sensitivity of the Screening Test" Journal of the National Cancer Institute 89(19):1440-1448.

Mandel JS, Bond JH, Church TR, Snover DC, Bradley GM, Schuman LM, Ederer F. (1993) "Reducing Mortality from Colorectal Cancer by Screening for Fecal Occult Blood. Minnesota Colon Cancer Control Study" New England Journal of Medicine 328:1365 1371.

Church T, Ederer F, Mandel J, Watt G, Geisser M. (1993) "Estimating the Duration of Ongoing Prevention Trials" American Journal of Epidemiology 137:797 810.

Chaloner K, Church T, Louis T, Matts J. (1993) "Graphical Elicitation of a Prior Distribution for A Clinical Trial" The Statistician 42:341-353.

McHugh RB, Church TR, Mandel JS, White CW. (1980) "The Parameterization of Predictive Value for Multisite Screening" Biometrics 36:523 529.