Jin-Shei Lai

Center Co-Principal Investigator, Steering Committee Member

Jin-Shei Lai, Ph.D., OTR/L., is a registered occupational therapist and a trained psychometrician. She has been a member of the Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), Proton Collaborative Group and the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium (PBTC). Dr. Lai has significant research experiences in outcome measurement, quality of life, symptom management and late effect due to the illness and/or its treatment in chronic illness for both pediatric and adult populations. She is the lead developer of the pediatric Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness scales, including Childhood Brain Tumor Survivor, Fatigue, Anorexia and Cachexia, and Cognition. Dr. Lai is recognized as an expert in both outcomes measurement and Item Response Theory (IRT). In particular, she has been working on developing and validating item banks related to health-related quality of life for people with chronic illness since 2000, including domains of fatigue, physical function, pain, emotional distress, psychosocial impacts from cancer experiences, cognition and social function. She has been integral in the development of item banks using IRT to measure perceived cognitive function and fatigue for both children and adults with and without chronic conditions.