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Bernard Fuemmeler, Ph.D., associate director for population sciences and the Gordon D. Ginder, M.D., Chair in Cancer Research at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, received the Senior Investigator Award from the Cancer Special Interest Group at the Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) 46th Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions held March 26-29 in San Francisco.

“The recognition for this award reflects the importance of addressing higher-level, multi-level approaches to improving health within populations and communities,” Fuemmeler said.

Fuemmeler currently serves as the immediate past president of SBM. The Cancer Special Interest Group in SBM is one of the larger interest groups within the organization, dedicated to researching quality of life and survivorship among cancer patients. 

Fuemmeler developed the theme of “Moving Behavioral Science Upstream” while serving as the SBM president in 2023-24, with the focus on bolstering behavioral sciences approaches to and relationships with their communities.

“I think that aligns really well with Massey’s goals of being a cancer center that is learning from the community,” Fuemmeler, who currently serves as SBM’s immediate past president, said. “Partnering with the community to discover how to better provide cancer prevention, health promotion and science that matters most to the people in that area: that’s how we’re going to make sustainable, meaningful and impactful change.”

The 2025 theme, "Context Matters: Bridging Perspectives in Behavioral Medicine,” is meant to bring contextual factors like policies, information systems and environmental impact into the forefront in the science and practice of behavioral medicine. Sessions showcased the importance of considering multi-level contexts, while bridging perspectives from different disciplines within behavioral science.

Among the presenters from VCU were Oxana Palesh, Ph.D., M.P.H., co-leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control research program at Massey, and Robert Campbell, clinical research coordinator, who shared findings related to their research in insomnia in cancer patients receiving treatment like chemotherapy. Their research showed that cancer patients are up to 80% more likely to have some sort of sleep disruption compared to 20% in the general population. 

Clinical research coordinator Robert Campbell presented research along with Oxana Palesh, Ph.D., M.P.H., at the 46th Annual SBM Meeting in San Francisco. “We want to investigate those negative sleep beliefs and how that can contribute to the physical and mental component of insomnia and sleep problems, as well as quality of life in people who are undergoing chemotherapy,” Campbell said.

Palesh says sleep problems have been undertreated and under-recognized for those undergoing cancer treatment, which led to her team’s study of dysfunctional beliefs carried by cancer patients receiving chemotherapy and, on theme, the context matters.

“We wanted to see how dysfunctional beliefs in sleep play a role in quality of life and insomnia,” Palesh said. “So this is a preliminary look to say, ‘How often do cancer patients have these disruptive cognitive beliefs about sleep? Do they interfere with insomnia and affect the quality of life?’ And we found that cancer patients undergoing treatment have a significantly higher number of disruptive beliefs about their sleep compared to the general population with insomnia. These disruptive beliefs do interfere with their sleep problems and do interfere with their health-related quality of life.”

The meeting also provided a valuable opportunity for Campbell, who led the team’s presentation at SBM. Palesh says if their findings hold, it could lead to creating further advances in treating cancer patients battling sleep problems.

"SBM is our premiere conference for behavioral scientists, so this is an opportunity to really showcase our research and get some tough questions that will help me think deeper about the next steps for my science,” Palesh said.

More than 15 VCU team members presented their research at the meeting in San Francisco, allowing them to be at the forefront of improving health outcomes, creating innovative solutions and shaping health care policies.

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Written by: Preston Willett