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Fred Hutch Cancer Center recently celebrated the Bus Family Endowed Chair, made possible by a generous gift from Dick and Melinda Bus of Burien, Wash. Holly Harris, MPH, ScD, was recently announced as the inaugural holder of this endowed chair that will support research in gynecologic oncology and breast cancer. Harris is an associate professor in the Public Health Sciences Division.
Often underfunded conditions get new support
Women’s health research has traditionally been critically underfunded. A study published in Nature Reviews Bioengineering noted that in 2020, funding for women’s health research made up only 5% of global research and development funding.
Gynecologic and breast cancers by the numbers
- Uterine, ovarian and female breast cancers account for nearly 20% of new cancer diagnoses in the United States annually for all genders, according to the National Cancer Institute.
- It’s estimated that more than 316,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer alone in 2025, with more than 4 million women living with the disease in the United States.
- Uterine and ovarian cancers are rarer but still prevalent, with an estimated 69,120 and 20,890 new cases, respectively, diagnosed in the United States last year.
The goal of the Bus Family Endowed Chair is to support cancer prevention and early detection or precision oncology related to the treatment of uterine, ovarian and breast cancers. The endowed chair provides flexible funding that the recipient can direct to their most pressing research needs.
“We’re very excited to be in a place where we can endow a chair at Fred Hutch,” said Melinda Bus. “Both of us are extremely interested in Holly Harris’ research. We both had women in our families who had cancer, and we hope to see cures for those sometime in the near future. We’re very excited to have Holly as the recipient of this endowed chair, and to contribute to her work in this area, both in prevention and cure of these terrible diseases.”
Widening the lens of women’s health
Fred Hutch has a long history in women’s health research, serving as the clinical coordinating center for the Women’s Health Initiative — the largest women’s health study ever undertaken.
Harris, who earned her doctoral degree in epidemiology from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2010, studies how lifestyle, nutrition and other health conditions can all impact women’s health, specifically in ovarian cancer and breast cancer. She also researches gynecologic conditions that share risk factors with these diseases, including uterine fibroids and endometriosis.
Among her research goals is identifying modifiable factors, such as diet and lifestyle, that can help reduce the incidence of these conditions. By examining relationships between certain conditions of the reproductive system, such as endometriosis and ovarian cancer, Harris aims to identify shared risk factors for these diseases. This could then widen the lens through which public health investigators consider how to help reduce disease burden by identifying at-risk individuals earlier in their lives for personalized screenings and preventive care.
“I feel really honored to receive the Bus Family Endowed Chair,” Harris said. “It feels like a privilege and a responsibility to continue to do the type of research that I'm doing, because it's clearly important."
Harris’ professional journey began when she worked in a hospital as an emergency room technician after her undergraduate years. At that time, she was considering pursuing a career as a physician. As Harris saw people return to the ER over time because of chronic health conditions, she wondered whether she should shift her focus to preventing disease rather than waiting until a person developed a serious illness to attempt to cure it.
She credits two critical early career mentors, Kathryn Terry, ScD, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Stacey Missmer, ScD, at University of Michigan Medical School, for helping her to hone her focus on gynecological health.
“They just really got me excited about those areas [of research],” Harris said. “And I think because of their strong mentorship, I was able to learn more about those conditions. They became two of my postdoc mentors that I still work with today. Having really quality mentorship makes science exciting.”
Harris’ most recent research illustrates her ability to make critical connections between lifestyle and health outcomes. One study looked at the link between healthy eating and the incidence of endometriosis, a chronic condition in which tissue similar to that normally found only in the lining of the uterus (the endometrium) grows outside the uterus, leading to potentially debilitating symptoms including pelvic pain and in some cases, infertility. The condition affects an estimated 190 million women of reproductive age worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Harris’ study showed that people who scored highly on the Alternative Healthy Eating Index, an 11-point list developed at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health that identifies eating patterns most likely to be associated with long-term health, had significantly less risk for developing endometriosis over their lifetimes.
Harris pointed out that endometriosis is a condition that needs much more awareness. Currently there is no non-invasive diagnostic test which would allow for earlier diagnosis, and the average delay between the onset of symptoms and an accurate diagnosis is seven years.
“It’s concerning that people would have to wait that long and be in pain for that long before getting an actual diagnosis,” Harris said.
Other studies Harris has led examined potential links between infertility and certain types of ovarian cancer; dietary links to early onset of female puberty; and potential links between dietary habits and premenopausal breast cancer. She notes that one reason she felt compelled to study ovarian cancer is that it is less discussed in the cancer advocacy community than other forms of cancer.
“Ovarian cancer is similar to endometriosis and fibroids in that people are not as aware of it,” Harris noted. “Sadly, this is because people aren't surviving ovarian cancer like they're surviving breast cancer.” (The five-year survival rate for breast cancer is over 90%, while for ovarian cancer it is 51.6%, according to the National Cancer Institute.)
“So there's not the [same] patient advocacy community, which is one of the reasons I really feel passionate about ovarian cancer research,” she said.
Harris also stressed the importance of studying how lifestyle factors, such as diet and other factors, could help patients manage their health, as long as the data supported these recommendations.
“It’s great to have traditional medical care,” for these illnesses, Harris said. “But for conditions that are complex, like endometriosis, where a person with the condition can have some autonomy to address symptoms themselves, I think that is super important.” Harris stressed that evidence-based lifestyle research is critical for understanding the lifestyle factors that lead to positive outcomes. “We don’t want to recommend things to people that aren't going to help them.”
Endowed chairs provide sustained research support
With a gift to endow a faculty chair, visionary donors empower scientists to pursue transformative ideas. Generous supporters have endowed more than 50 chairs at Fred Hutch to date, honoring faculty members and giving them flexible funding for innovative research. Endowment gifts are critical to long-term sustainability and are a cornerstone of the Campaign for Fred Hutch, which is bringing together the Fred Hutch community to radically increase the pace and scale of discovery.
“We are deeply grateful to the Bus family for their extraordinary generosity in endowing this chair,” said Fred Hutch President and Director Thomas J. Lynch Jr., MD, holder of the Raisbeck Endowed Chair. “This transformational gift will support new research in areas that affect women’s health throughout their lives, with the hope of alleviating symptoms of life-altering conditions like endometriosis and finding new ways to treat gynecologic and breast cancers.”
Harris, whose research covers a wide span of conditions affecting women from early adolescence to later adulthood, will be able to pursue her research secure in the knowledge that financial support will be ongoing, thanks to the Bus family’s endowment. It is a gift that she hopes will lead to wide-ranging breakthroughs in women’s health.
“Gynecological health is ever present,” Harris said. “What I really want from my research [career] is for everybody to have a high quality of life, and to live their lives to the fullest.”
