Karen L Weihs, MD

Cancer Prevention and Control Program

Biography

Dr. Weihs is a graduate of the University of Iowa College of Medicine. She completed her residency in Family Medicine and practiced on the faculty of Family Medicine at Brown University prior to returning to a Psychiatry Residency Training, including child psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin. She then obtained a K24 Scientist Development Award for Clinicians to obtain research training and experience at the George Washington University, College of Medicine, Center for Family Research under the mentorship of David Reiss, M.D. She has an active program of research as well as a clinical and teaching practice of psychoOncology and psychotherapy at UA.

Cancer Focus

Dr. Weihs has an ongoing program of psychosocial intervention research at the UA Cancer Center, where she also has an active clinical practice of psychiatric care for cancer patients embedded with the multidisciplinary team. She collaborates with intervention scientists to test innovative approaches to psychosocial interventions for breast cancer patients. She has conducted three prospective longitudinal studies to determine the impact of emotional and interpersonal processes on medical, psychiatric, functional and quality of life outcomes in breast cancer patients. These studies enrolled 179, 140 and 460(two sites) subjects with multiple occasions of in depth data collection over 1 – 3 years with seven year follow-up for disease outcomes.