Tomoko Takayama

National Cancer Centre, Japan

Dr. Takayama is a Section Head of Patterns of Care Survey Section in the Division of Cancer Information Services and Surveillance, Center for Cancer Control and Information Services, National Cancer Center (NCC), Tokyo, since 2006.

She started her career as a nurse at the Center for Neurosurgery, the Tokyo Women’s Medical College Hospital in 1989. She received her Ph.D. in Health Sciences from School of Health Science & Nursing, the Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo in 2002. She has expertise in health sociology and health communication. She started her research activity as a research fellow at the Japan Foundation for Aging and Health as data manager of prospective intervention randomized clinical trial for the patients with diabetes in the elderly in 2001. In 2003, she entered Okayama University Medical School, as an Assistant professor at Community Health & Nursing Faculty of Health Sciences, where she taught health promotion and community health and nursing, and she became an Associate professor in the same faculty.

In May 2006, she moved to present section at the National Cancer Center, where her responsibility is to develop and disseminate reliable cancer information to the patient and their family as well as the health professionals. Also she is in charge of the broad area of supporting the Cancer Care Support Center located in 351 designated Cancer Hospitals all over Japan. Her research interests are the area of health communication, interpersonal, organizational, and public health communication.

Dr. Takayama studied health communication and the cancer information systems in the United States, as a senior visiting Fulbright scholar from July 2006 to April 2007, at the George Mason University in Virginia, USA.