Catherine Bender, a professor and Endowed Oncology Chair at Pitt’s School of Nursing, is this year’s recipient of the Oncology Nursing Society’s Distinguished Researcher Award.
Bender was recognized for her research in describing the effects of endocrine therapy with aromatase inhibitors on cognitive function in postmenopausal women with breast cancer. Her studies suggested that compared to matched healthy women, women with breast cancer have poorer executive functioning before they began therapy and that women who received aromatase inhibitors had significantly poorer executive function through the first 18 months of treatment. Bender will present her research results at the ONS Annual Congress next May in Washington, D.C.