MHS alumnae Sprod receives award

MEEKER I Local Meeker High School alumnae Lisa K. Sprod, PhD, was honored with the 2012 ASCO Pain and Symptom Management Award.
“This is a highly competitive award and I am excited and honored to be chosen to receive it,” Sprod said. She has been studying physical activity and limitations on cancer patients, particularly older patients. She will give a presentation on functional limitations of older patients compared to younger patients and how these limitations and reduced physical activity may leave older patients at a greater risk of cancer recurrence and reduced survival.
Sprod graduated from Meeker in 1995, received her bachelor’s degree from Colorado Mesa University after playing Division I basketball at the University of Wyoming before transferring. She was a recipient of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Scholar Athlete Award every semester. She attended the University of Northern Colorado for her graduate work where she found her interest in investigating physical exercise in older patients with cancer. She was the clinical coordinator at the Rocky Mountain Cancer Rehabilitation Institute while at the University of Northern Colorado. It was in this role that she first examined the role exercise plays in side-effect management in cancer survivors.
Dr. Sprod received her doctoral degree in 2009 and was awarded the National Cancer Institute Biobehavioral Cancer Control research fellowship at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. She will be an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s School of Health and Applied Human Sciences this fall.
This award is one of many Dr. Sprod has received for her work, including a National Institute of Health Clinical Investigator Award, and the Cancer Exercise Trainer Certification from the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Cancer Society.