Director: Lari Wenzel, 949.824.3926
Facility Manager: Leola McClure, 949.824.3384, tmcclure@uci.edu
Financial Manager: Jana Reynolds, 949.824.0095, jlreynol@uci.edu

The Biobehavioral Shared Resource is located on the UCI South Campus in the University Research Park.  The formal address is:

UCI Biobehavioral Shared Resource
School of Medicine
111 Academy, Suite 220
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-5800

In 2002, Dr. Frank Meyskens, Director of the Chao Comprehensive Cancer Center, recognized the need to formally incorporate the behavioral sciences into Cancer Center research efforts.  Senior leaders of the Cancer Center conducted several retreats to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration among the Cancer Center faculty.  These retreats fostered successful collaboration between key members of the Population Sciences with faculty in Translational Oncology and Onco-Imaging & Spectroscopy, in addition to enhancing intraprogrammatic collaborations within the Division of Population Sciences. The Biobehavioral Shared Resource was then established to assist in the Cancer Center’s translational research efforts through measurement of patient-reported outcomes, and to enhance patient/participant-reported outcomes within an already strong Division of Population Sciences.  The aim of the Biobehavioral Shared Resource is to support cancer researchers by providing them with the necessary expertise and assistance to incorporate patient/participant-reported outcomes into their research.  During this five-year period as a developing Shared Resource, we have collaborated with 37 investigators, spanning six Cancer Center programs, to participate in over $10 million of funded research.  The Biobehavioral Shared Resource has experienced steady growth in number of users and diversity of projects.  We anticipate further growth in requests for support from this Shared Resource, since the College of Health Sciences has recently launched a Program in Public Health, a Department of Nursing, and a Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences.  This is relevant because many new and existing Cancer Center faculty and staff are academically housed within each of these areas of growth at UCI, and patient/participant-reported information is a relevant research outcome for current and proposed cancer-specific projects within each of these programs/departments.