Dr. Amy Comander is a breast oncologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. She is Director of Breast Oncology and Cancer Survivorship at the Mass General Cancer Center in Waltham and at Newton Wellesley Hospital, and Medical Director of the Mass General Cancer Center in Waltham. Dr. Comander is Director of Lifestyle Medicine at the Mass General Cancer Center, which is the first cancer center to have a dedicated lifestyle medicine program. As an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, she enjoys teaching medical students and residents about oncology, as well as lifestyle medicine.

Given her strong interest in cancer survivorship and lifestyle medicine, Dr. Comander is dedicated to improving the quality of life, well-being, and outcome of individuals with cancer through important lifestyle interventions, including exercise, diet, and mind/body interventions. She promotes healthy lifestyles for both her active treatment patients as well as those in the survivorship phase of care. She practices what she preaches, having run marathons, including ten consecutive Boston Marathons so far, with the goal to improve the lives of those with a diagnosis of cancer.

In collaboration with Dr. Beth Frates, she has launched “PAVING the Path to Wellness,” a 12-week lifestyle medicine-based survivorship program for women with breast cancer. Along with Dr. Frates and Dr. Michelle Tollefson, she has published the “PAVING the Path to Wellness” workbook. Dr. Comander is currently proud to serve as the first oncologist on the Board of Directors of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. She is also on the Board of the Ellie Fund, a non-profit that provides services and support to women diagnosed with breast cancer in Massachusetts. She is a medical advisor to the non-profit organization, SurvivingBreastCancer.org. She has served as a medical advisor to Oneinforty, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating people of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage about the one-in-forty chance of having inherited a BRCA mutation. She is married to Jason, a physician-scientist at Mass Eye and Ear, and is the mom of two teenagers. 

Links:

Learn more about Amy's PAVING the Path to Wellness Program here

Find more tips for lifestyle change in the PAVING the Path to Wellness Workbook