April 17, 2006

SIU Med School Receives Grant to Study Exercise

in Cancer Survivors

A physician at SIU School of Medicine in Springfield has been awarded a one-year grant to study the feasibility and effectiveness of a program to help breast cancer patients exercise. Total budget for the grant from the Sons of the Confederate Veterans Brooks Medical Research Fund is $97,568.

The study will evaluate how well a 12-week program will enable breast cancer survivors to follow a regular exercise program. They will look at whether the program participants have better health and better quality of life.

Dr. Laura Q. Rogers, associate professor of internal medicine is the project’s principal investigator. Rogers is currently working on another study looking at exercise in rural breast cancer survivors. She has been a researcher since 1989 and her previous research has focused on healthy lifestyles related to high cholesterol management, osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.

Rogers joined the SIU faculty in 2000.  She completed a fellowship in faculty development in general internal medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1990) and her internal medicine residency at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta (1987).  She earned her medical degree at the University of South Florida School of Medicine in Tampa (1984), master’s in public health at the University of South Carolina in Columbia (2000), and bachelor’s at Erskine College in Due West, S.C. (1980).

Sons of the Confederate Veterans Brooks Medical Research Fund, located in Columbia, Tenn., was established to further medical research at accredited medical schools. For further information about the research fund, contact Robert C. Herr III at 618-237-7101.

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