Nancy Borstelmann

Nancy Borstelmann, PhD, MPH, LCSW is chief of family behavioral health services in hematology/oncology at the Yale Child Study Center and co-director of the Early Onset Cancer Program for Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital. Prior to starting her position at Yale in June 2022, Dr. Borstelmann was the senior director of social work at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and chief of the division of social work in the Department of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care. She is a licensed clinical social worker with broad experience in interdisciplinary cancer and behavioral health care.

Dr. Borstelmann has focused her career on serving patients and families through direct clinical roles, program development, research, education, and leadership. Her professional commitment has been to wholistic patient and family care, given the wide-ranging mental health, emotional, social, and other key quality of life needs of patients and their families. Dr. Borstelmann has co-developed, implemented, and supported major institutional initiatives including patient navigation programs directed at reducing barriers to cancer screening (breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers) among historically marginalized populations, and psychosocial distress screening for all new patients across the Dana-Farber network. She has been an investigator on studies including early onset cancer caregivers’ challenges, parenting with cancer, emotional well-being as a young cancer survivor, and communication in end-of-life care and bereavement among family members. Dr. Borstelmann serves on the advisory board of Infinite Strength, a community non-profit addressing the needs of single mothers with metastatic breast cancer.

Dr. Borstelmann received her BS in Biology from Tufts University, her MPH from the Yale School of Public Health with concentration in chronic disease epidemiology, her MSW with concentration in adult mental health from the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, and her PhD in social work from Simmons College Graduate School of Social Work.