Loraine A. Escobedo, PhD is a Research Scientist at the Cancer Research Center for Health Equity at Cedars-Sinai Cancer.  Prior to joining Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Escobedo was a Senior Service Fellow/Statistician at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.  She is interested in research that pushes invisible health issues to the forefront using multi-level, multi-component and replicable methods to characterize disease risk in underrepresented populations and for policy-relevant geographies.

Dr. Varella is a medical oncologist and a clinical investigator specializing in breast cancer. She has led several studies examining breast cancer outcomes and has been a co-investigator in multiple breast cancer clinical trials. In addition, she teaches medical students, residents, and fellows, and was awarded the “Teacher of the Year” award by the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Weill Cornell in 2019. She will now be joining the Dana-Farber Institute as a breast cancer oncologist and clinical researcher, and will continue to focus her research on improving outcomes for young patients with breast cancer.