Executive Leadership

Eric B. Durbin, DrPH, MS

Director Kentucky Cancer Registry
(859) 218-6227
Eric Durbin ED
Biography

About Eric

Eric Durbin serves as Director of the Kentucky Cancer Registry and Director of Cancer Informatics at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center. In these roles, he leads Kentucky's statewide population-based cancer surveillance program and oversees the development and maintenance of cancer informatics systems that support data collection, quality assurance, and dissemination.

Under his leadership, KCR has maintained continuous NAACCR Gold Certification and strengthened its partnerships with the National Cancer Institute's SEER program and the CDC's National Program of Cancer Registries. Dr. Durbin has been instrumental in advancing electronic reporting infrastructure, including pathology data integration and the cancer-rates.info web mapping platform.

His research interests include natural language processing applied to cancer pathology reports, large-scale data linkage, and population-based surveillance methodology. He has contributed to numerous peer-reviewed publications and national working groups focused on improving cancer registry data quality and interoperability.

Areas of Expertise

Focus Areas

Cancer Surveillance Informatics Leadership NLP & Data Science SEER / NPCR Programs Electronic Reporting
Selected Publications

Peer-Reviewed Work

2024
Population-Based Data Linkage Describing Patterns of Cancer Clinical Trial Enrollment Among Children and Adolescents
Siegel DA, Durbin EB, et al. — JCO Oncology Practice, Vol. 20(5), pp. 631–642
Examines patterns of pediatric cancer clinical trial enrollment using population-based data linkage between cancer registries and clinical trial databases.
2023
DeepPhe-CR: Natural Language Processing Software Services for Cancer Registrar Case Abstraction
Hochheiser H, Finan S, Yuan Z, Durbin EB, et al. — JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics
Presents NLP software services designed to assist cancer registrars in automating case abstraction from clinical pathology reports, reducing manual abstraction burden.
2021
Real World Clinicopathologic Observations of Patients with Metastatic Solid Tumors Receiving Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Therapy: Analysis from Kentucky Cancer Registry
Jacob A, Wu J, Kolesar J, Durbin E, et al. — Cancer Medicine
Real-world analysis leveraging KCR data to characterize outcomes and clinicopathologic features of metastatic solid tumor patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors.
2019
Identifying Smoking Status and Smoking Cessation Using a Data Linkage Between the Kentucky Cancer Registry and Health Claims Data
Gallaway MS, Huang B, Chen Q, Tucker T, McDowell J, Durbin E, et al. — JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics
Demonstrates a data linkage methodology between KCR and health insurance claims to identify smoking status and cessation patterns among cancer patients.
View Full Publication List
In the News

Coverage & Announcements

2025
Dr. Eric B. Durbin Selected to Serve as Interim Division Chief for Biomedical Informatics
UK College of Medicine — Oct 2025
Durbin was appointed interim division chief for biomedical informatics in the UK College of Medicine Department of Internal Medicine, effective September 2025.
2025
Dr. Durbin Named President of National Cancer Registry Organization
UK College of Medicine — Aug 2025
Elected president of the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) for a two-year term, bringing over 35 years of experience in population-based cancer surveillance.
2025
Welcome from the Incoming NAACCR President, Eric Durbin
The NAACCR Narrative — Jul 2025
Durbin's inaugural message as NAACCR president outlining his vision for modernizing cancer data collection, advancing EHR integration, and improving registry efficiency.
2023
Markey Research Seeks to Understand Appalachia's Childhood Cancer Disparity
UK Research News — Feb 2023
Features Durbin's discovery of 41% higher rates of low-grade astrocytomas among Appalachian children and the formation of the ACCELERATE Consortium for pediatric cancer research.