Dr. Andrea La Croix

Biography

Dr. LaCroix received her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular disease at The Johns Hopkins University. She joined the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Public Health Sciences Division, where she led activities for the Women's Health Initiative Clinical Coordinating Center for more than 17 years. From 1989 to 2013, Dr. LaCroix was a faculty member at the University of Washington (UW) and Senior Scientific Investigator at the Group Health Research Institute. Her research focuses on identifying behavioral, pharmaceutical, biomarker, and genetic factors related to the development of chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. She specializes in the health of postmenopausal older women and has built a sustained research program that spans broad areas of etiologic and epidemiologic studies aimed at improving health services and testing preventive interventions to enhance public health and clinical care for women across their lifespan. As a clinical trialist, Dr. LaCroix is the Principal Investigator for major trials testing preventive interventions for fractures, including the Fracture Intervention Trial and PEARL Trial. In addition to the WHI, she leads the Data Coordinating Center for Menopause Strategies: Finding Lasting Answers for Symptoms Health (MsFLASH), a multidisciplinary network of clinical trialists that conducted 4 clinical trials testing 7 interventions for the relief of menopause symptoms in the past 6 years. She has served on the National Advisory Council on Aging and chaired the Clinical Trials Advisory Panel for the NIA. In 2010, she received the McDougall Mentoring Award for her work in developing postdoctoral fellows through a T32 training program entitled, 'Improving Health Care for Aging Women.' Dr. LaCroix is the Director of UCSD's Women's Health Center of Excellence, which launched in December 2013, and is the author of over 300 publications.

Research Interests