Kimlin Tam Ashing, Ph.D.

Kimlin Tam Ashing, Ph.D., is a professor and founding director of the Center of Community Alliance for Research & Education (CCARE) at City of Hope. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Colorado Boulder. As an advocate-scientist, she is advancing population health science and practice. She is a population, behavioral scientist working to develop and implement evidenced-based, culturally, clinically and community responsive health improvement interventions. Her mission is to engage advocates and civil society in science to speed up and ensure the public benefit of biomedical research and advancements.

Dr. Ashing holds several national leadership roles within the African-Caribbean Cancer Consortium, National Advisory Council for the Asian Pacific Islander Native Hawaiian Cancer Survivors Network and the Young Survival Coalition, and served on the Executive Council of American Cancer Society, Los Angeles. She is a life member of the Association of Black Psychologists and a licensed clinical psychologist. She served as board member, chaired the Mentoring Committee and continues on the Scientific and Mentoring Committees of the American Psychosocial Oncology Society. She serves as scientific advisor to Latinas Contra Cancer, Caribbean Medical Providers Practicing Abroad and Army of Women. She is scientific partner with the Association of Black Women Physicians, Los Angeles Chapter, and The Take Action of Health Initiative — a community benefits partnership among National Urban League, Anthem and Pfizer. She was awarded the prestigious Fox Award for advancing the field of psychooncology by the International Psycho-Oncology Society, and is a member of the Human Rights Taskforce. She sits on the Minority in Cancer Research Council of the American Association of Cancer Researchers (AACR). In 2017, she co-chaired the Mentoring and Career Development sessions for the Science of Health Disparities Conference and the Annual AACR meeting in 2018. 

Dr. Ashing is the notable leader in examining health disparities, and cancer inequities, survivorship and quality of life. She has published over 80 articles and book chapters. In 2017, she co-authored "Detecting and Living with Breast Cancer: for Dummies," Wiley, New York. Her scholarship is to understand how culture, ethnicity and socio-ecological, structural and systemic contexts influence health and patient centered outcomes, including mortality, morbidity, distress, symptoms and quality of life. She applies this knowledge to implement interventions to improve well-being and reduce health inequities.

My studies have demonstrated the following key findings relevant to health-related quality of life outcomes. My work is seminal and informs the health-related quality of life research relevant to ethnic and linguistic minorities:

My early work showed the contributions of socioecological and cultural dimension of health-related quality of life and survivorship outcomes:

• Ashing-Giwa K, Lim JW. (2008). Predicting Health-related Quality of Life: Testing the Contextual Model using Structural Equation Modeling. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 3(3), 215-230.
• Ashing-Giwa K, Kim J, Tejero J. (2008). Measuring Quality of Life among Cervical Cancer Survivors: Preliminary Assessment of Instrumentation Validity in a Cross-Cultural Study. Quality of Life Research, 17(1), 147-57.
• Kagawa-Singer, M., Padilla G.V., Ashing-Giwa, K. (2010). Health-Related Quality of Life and Culture, Seminars in Oncology Nursing, 26(1), 59-67.
• Ashing-Giwa K, Lim JW, Gonzalez P. (2010). Exploring the Relationship between Physical well-being and Healthy Lifestyle Changes among European- and Latina-American Breast and Cervical Cancer Survivors. Psycho-Oncology, 19, 1161-70.

My ongoing investigations focusing on health disparities in cancer, at the systemic level, including my studies demonstrating diagnostic and therapeutic delays in underserved populations:

• Ashing-Giwa K, Gonzalez P, Lim JW, Cathie Chung, Benjamin Paz, George Somlo, Mark T. Wakabayashi. (2010). Diagnostic and Therapeutic Delays Among a Multiethnic Sample of Breast and Cervical Cancer Survivors. Cancer, 116(13), 3195-3204.
• Ashing-Giwa K, Lim JW, Tang J. (2010). Surviving cervical cancer: does health related quality of life influence survival? Gynecologic Oncology, 118(1), 35-42.
• Akmal Y, Lee W, Mailey B. Ashing-Giwa K, et al. (2012). Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Outcomes with Chemoradiation Therapy for Rectal Adenocarcinoma. International Journal of Colorectal Disease, 27(6), 737-49.
• Ashing-Giwa K, Rosales, M. (2013). Examining Patient Reported Evaluation of Therapeutic Care Delay Among Latina- and European-American Cervical Cancer Survivors. Gynecologic oncology, 128(2), 160-5.

My studies have demonstrated that there exist persistent health-related quality of life concerns with differential outcomes among multi-ethnic cancer survivors.

• Ashing-Giwa K, Lim JW. (2011). Health-related Quality of Life Outcomes among Cervical Cancer Survivors: Examining Ethnic and Linguistic Differences. Cancer Epidemiology, 35(2), 194-201.
• Ashing, K., Rosales, M., Lai, L., Hurria, A. (2014). Occurrence of comorbidities among African-American and Latina breast cancer survivors. Journal of Cancer Survivorship, 8(2), 312-318
• Lim JW, Ashing-Giwa K. (2015). Examining the Effect of Minority Status and Neighborhood Characteristics on Cervical Cancer Survival Outcomes. Gynecologic Oncology, 121 (1), 87-93.
• Pisu M, Ashing K, et al. (2015). Economic Hardship of Minority and Non-minority Cancer Survivors One Year After Diagnosis: Another Long Term Effect of Cancer? Cancer, 121(8), 1257-64. PMCID: PMC4393356

CCARE implements studies investigating the benefit of culturally and clinically responsive interventions with African-American and Latina-American cancer survivors. The results are encouraging and provide evidence that culturally, socially and clinically responsive educational interventions are effective.

• Ashing-Giwa K. (2008). Enhancing physical well-being and overall quality of life among underserved Latina-American cervical cancer survivors: feasibility study. Journal of Cancer Survivorship, 2(3), 215-223.
• Ashing KT, Miller AM. (2015). Assessing the utility of a telephonically delivered psychoeducational intervention to improve health-related quality of life in African American breast cancer survivors: A pilot trial. Psycho-Oncology, DOI: 10.1002/pon.3823
• Ashing K, Miller A, Katuli S. A Pilot, Telephonic-Based Trial to Improve Emotional well-being among African American Breast Cancer Survivors. Psychooncology, In Press.
• Ashing K, Carrington, Ragin C, Katuli S, Roach V. Feasibility study: An Implementation Intervention to Reduce Stigma and Increased Pap Testing in Trinidad and Southern California. Cancer Causes and Control, In Press.
• Ashing K, Carrington, Ragin C, Katuli S, Roach V. Examining the role of Knowledge and Stigma in Influencing HPV Vaccine Acceptability among Black Women in the U.S. and Trinidad. Health Communications, In Press.

Central to our mission is the engagement of ethnic minority in the scientific arena, including clinical trials, biospecimen, population and behavioral research. We work to build capacity and infrastructure among our members to be well equipped to partner in research and projects, as well as engage communities in cancer research, including cervical cancer studies, to speed up our understanding of cancer prevention and control, and the benefit of science in our communities to reduce health disparities and bring health equity. Further, I at City of Hope united eight community-based advocacy and cancer supportive organization to form the African American Cancer Coalition (AACC). The AACC is a collaborative group made up of active, independent grass-roots community organizations who have joined forces using community participatory research principles to examine and improve prevention practices, survivorship and health-related quality of life outcomes among African descended peoples.

• Ashing-Giwa K. (1999). The recruitment of breast cancer survivors into cancer control studies: a focus on African-American women. Journal of the National Medical Association, 91(5), 255-260.
• Blackman E, Thurman N, Halliday D, Butler R, Francis D, Joseph M, Thompson J, Akers A, Andraos-Selim C, Bondzi C, Taioli E, Hagan KL, Jones EA, Jones J, Moss CM, Smith AC, Ashing KT, Ragin CC. (2013). Multi-center Study of Human Papillomavirus and the Human Papillomavirus Vaccine: Knowledge and Attitudes Among People of African Descent. Infectious Diseases in Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2013, 428582.
• Ashing K, Rosales M, Fernandez A. (2015). Exploring the influence of demographic and medical characteristics of African-American and Latinas on enrollment in a behavioral intervention study for breast cancer survivors. Quality of Life Research, 24(20), 445-54.
• Ashing K, et al. (2014). Nurturing Advocacy Inclusion to Bring Health Equity in Breast Cancer among African Descended Women. Breast Cancer Management, 3(6), 487-495.

Dr. Ashing's research interests include understanding and addressing Black/African American health disparities, particularly focusing on Caribbean immigrants, who make up 50 percent of Black immigrants in the United States. In partnership with Dr. Camille Ragin, founder of the African Caribbean Cancer Consortium, Dr. Ashing received NIH P20 and R01 funding for developing research infrastructure that fosters team science (including epidemiologist, biologists, clinicians and behavioral scientists) to address the growing cancer threat. Dr. Ashing is also listening and responding to the needs of patients, caregivers, survivors and community members.

Dr. Ashing's studies are providing evidence on the benefit of culturally and clinically responsive strategies to increasing the participation of ethnic minority populations in research. Development and promulgation of such research approaches and methods help in creating a more representative sample of cancer patients and survivors in biomedical research.