Jinani Jayasekera, Ph.D., M.S.

Decision sciences include a range of quantitative and qualitative methods to inform decision-making at individual, interpersonal, community, and societal levels. The focus on "decision" as the unit of analysis provides a unique framework to develop interventions that could help reduce health disparities. Decision sciences utilize a variety of tools, such as biostatistics, econometrics, mathematical modeling, economic analysis, operations research, behavioral research, systematic reviews, and meta-analysis.

Research Projects

Clinical Decision Tools to Support Individualized Breast Cancer Care
Individualized clinical decision tools are used to guide breast cancer prevention, screening, treatment, and survivorship care decisions in clinical practice settings. Dr. Jayasekera's research program is focused on developing 'calculation-engines' for individualized clinical decision tools using mathematical modeling. These models provide a powerful computational method to combine information from different high-quality data sources and generate individualized cancer outcomes (e.g., survival, recurrence) considering demographic (e.g., age), clinical (e.g., comorbidities, tumor size), genomic (e.g., 21-gene recurrence score), and contextual (e.g., socioeconomic status) characteristics of patients seen in clinical settings. The tools could be used to reduce health disparities by improving access to cancer care, patient-provider communication, and care delivery.

"Virtual" Clinical Trials to Inform Cancer Care
Randomized clinical trials are the gold standard for understanding intervention effects and developing clinical guidelines. However, clinical trials consume enormous amounts of time and resources. The Health Disparities and Decision Sciences research lab uses a range of tools to synthesize existing data and simulate clinical trials to predict trial outcomes; identify key design issues prior to the implementation of a clinical trial; and most importantly, evaluate the implications of trial designs and results on minority health and health disparities.

Dr. Jinani Jayasekera is an Earl Stadtman investigator and an NIH Distinguished Scholar in the Division of Intramural Research at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD). Prior to joining NIMHD, she was an Assistant (tenure-line) Professor of Oncology at the School of Medicine at Georgetown University. She received her master's and doctorate in Pharmaceutical Health Services Research from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She holds a bachelor's degree in Pharmacy and a master's degree in Financial Economics from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Dr. Jayasekera has over a decade of experience in cancer health services research and mathematical modeling. Her research has been funded by the National Cancer Institute, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. In 2021, Dr. Jayasekera received the John F. Potter award for Outstanding Early-Stage Researcher from the Georgetown-Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in recognition of her work in translational breast cancer research. She is the recipient of several research awards including the 2024 NIH/NIMHD Merit Award for Scientific Innovation, 2020 Eisenberg Career Development Award from the Georgetown Women in Medicine, and a Cancer Prevention Research Fellowship from the American Society of Preventive Oncology (ASPO) in 2017. Dr. Jayasekera has served as a reviewer for several journals and was recognized as an Outstanding Reviewer by the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2020. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI), and Cancer.