Madison Wempe

I joined King’s College in 2022 as the Centre for Society and Mental Health (CSMH) Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB) Coordinator and Research Assistant supporting the development of an open access research methods toolkit.

Prior to joining King’s, I earned my BSc in Public Health at the George Washington University (GWU) in 2018 and my MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in 2021, where I led thesis work which examined the impact of police presence on safety in United States public schools. Informed by this work and my time spent participating in mutual aid efforts in London (Streets Kitchen) and Texas (O.D. Aid, FunkyTown Fridge), my current interests include social epidemiology, participatory research, community building, harm reduction, and emerging, non-biomedical approaches to psychiatric care. Before pursuing my MSc, I spent two years working as a Research Associate at a cancer research non-profit (Friends of Cancer Research) in Washington, DC where I used data to investigate questions around patient access to care.

I feel strongly that research should stem from and return to communities in real, tangible ways and I seek to upend traditional notions of what it means to be a “holder of knowledge” in research spaces.

Research Interests

• Social Epidemiology
• Participatory Research
• Community Building
• Harm Reduction
• Emerging, Non-Biomedical Approaches to Psychiatric Care

Key publications

A National Assessment of Diagnostic Test Use for Patients with Advanced NSCLC and Factors Influencing Physician Decision-Making - PMC (nih.gov)

Modernizing Clinical Trial Eligibility Criteria: Recommendations of the ASCO–Friends of Cancer Research Prior Therapies Work Group | Clinical Cancer Research | American Association for Cancer Research (aacrjournals.org)

Tumor mutational burden standardization initiatives: Recommendations for consistent tumor mutational burden assessment in clinical samples to guide immunotherapy treatment decisions - PubMed (nih.gov)

Friends of Cancer Research Perspective on Platform Trials | Jeffrey D. (taylorfrancis.com)