Dr. Kenfield has broad interests in cancer prevention, epidemiology, and public health and her doctoral thesis focused on smoking and smoking cessation and cause-specific mortality, and incidence of lung cancer subtypes; this research resulted in a first-author publication in JAMA. Her current research interests include nutritional and lifestyle risk factors for prostate cancer incidence and progression to identify opportunities for prevention and improved survival in the millions of men diagnosed with prostate cancer worldwide. Her goals are three-fold: to further the evidence base through rigorous observational and interventional studies; to identify biologic mechanisms underlying lifestyle associations; and to disseminate information to patients via tested methods to improve clinical and psychological outcomes. She and her colleagues were the first to publish on the strong inverse association of vigorous physical activity after prostate cancer diagnosis and prostate cancer mortality in JCO (Kenfield et al, 2011, in HPFS), followed by a separate independent study in CaPSURE observing similar associations for the outcome of prostate cancer progression, published by her research group (Richman et al, Cancer Res, 2011), and since confirmed in other studies in Sweden and Canada (Bonn et al, Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev, 2015 and Friedenreich et al, Eur Urol, 2016).

She recently published on a lifestyle score for lethal prostate cancer, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in November 2015, and estimated that 47% of lethal prostate cancer would be prevented in the US if men over 60 had 5 or 6 specific healthy habits related to diet, exercise, and obesity. She is currently PI of a lifestyle trial at UCSF called Prostate 8, to determine if a web-based lifestyle program can help men adopt behaviors associated with reduced prostate cancer progression. She is also PI of a randomized controlled trial examining the effects of aerobic exercise vs. resistance exercise vs. usual care in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) and co-investigator on a randomized controlled trial examining a home-based exercise intervention among men pursuing active surveillance for prostate cancer. She has been involved with multiple Movember-funded initiatives including being appointed as Protocol Development Working Group Leader for GAP4 (AKA INTERVAL-MCRPC), a multi-site global trial of exercise in 866 men with mCRPC, and has recently been appointed as Director of the Study Coordination Center for GAP4, which is based at UCSF, for the 20+ sites in Europe, the US, Canada, and Australia. She is also a co-investigator on the Movember True NTH Community of Wellness project to disseminate individualized web-based lifestyle information for prostate cancer patients worldwide (building on Prostate 8), and a Department of Defense Transformative Impact Award to develop, validate, and disseminate an integrated risk prediction model and decision aid to discern aggressive vs. indolent prostate cancer. She has co-published a new diet and lifestyle guide in 2015 for prostate cancer patients with UCSF faculty Drs. Van Blarigan and Chan, Dr. Meir Stampfer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Prostate Cancer Foundation, available here: http://www.pcf.org/atf/cf/%7B7C77D6A2-5859-4D60-AF47-132FD0F85892%7D/PCF_H&W_Guide.pdf