Fang Fang Zhang

Professor of Epidemiology, Tufts University
Dr. Fang Fang Zhang is a nutritional epidemiologist with expertise in assessing dietary intake patterns, trends, and disparities in the population, and conducting observational studies and clinical trials to investigate the role of nutrition in cancer prevention and control. She has led pioneering work that assessed dietary intake in adult survivors of childhood cancer and its associations with treatment exposure, chronic health conditions, and quality of life. Following her study that identified adult cancer survivors in the US have poor diet quality, she builds partnerships with key stakeholders in learning about the complex web of factors that influence the dietary intake patterns of cancer survivors.

Dr. Zhang is committed to translating scientific evidence into programs, practices, and policies. She has developed a web-based intervention program that helps parents transition family into healthy eating soon after the child completes active cancer treatment, and is working on food is medicine interventions that integrate food and nutrition into oncology care through prescription of medically tailored meals and nutrition counseling for vulnerable patients with lung cancer.

Dr. Zhang’s research interests also include quantifying preventable cancer burden associated with suboptimal diet, assessing the cost-effectiveness of population strategies to improve diet and reduce cancer burden and disparities in the US, and evaluating the health, environmental, economic, and social impact of sustainable diet. Dr. Zhang’s work has been highlighted in the NIH Director’s Blog and NIH Research Matters.

Dr. Zhang received her PhD with distinction in Epidemiology from Columbia University and MD from Fudan University Shanghai Medical College. She is a recipient of the Eileen O'Neil Citation for Excellence in Teaching and an inaugural recipient of the Miriam E. Nelson Tisch Faculty Fellow from Tufts University.