Dr. Amy Comander is Director of Breast Oncology and Survivorship at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Waltham and at Newton Wellesley Hospital. She is Medical Director of the MGH Cancer Center in Waltham, and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. As of August 1, 2022, I will become the Director of the Mass General Cancer Center Lifestyle Medicine Program. In this role, my goal is to ensure that patients at the Mass General Cancer Center, and beyond, have access to education and tools from lifestyle medicine in order to improve physical fitness, nutrition, quality of life, and cancer prognosis.

Dr. Comander is a graduate of Harvard University, where as an undergraduate she developed a passion for understanding the biological basis of behavior, and she studied neurobiology and psychology as part of the multidisciplinary Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative. She then received her MD at Yale University School of Medicine. She completed her Internal Medicine residency training and Hematology-Oncology fellowship training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. She is board certified in Hematology, Medical Oncology, and Lifestyle Medicine.

As a breast oncologist, Dr. Comander has witnessed the struggles her patients face during and following completion of primary cancer treatment, and she is passionate about improving the overall health and well-being of breast cancer survivors through lifestyle interventions. She is the founding co-chair of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) Breast Cancer subcommittee of the Women’s Health MIG.

In collaboration with Dr. Beth Frates and Dr. Michelle Tollefson, she has launched PAVING the Path to Wellness Program lifestyle medicine group for breast cancer survivors. Recently she has started training other colleagues at the MGH Cancer Center to run PAVING groups, so this transformational experience can be offered to a larger group of breast cancer survivors. Dr. Comander practices what she preaches, having run marathons, including 9 consecutive Boston Marathons thus far. She views running marathons as a metaphor for life, and her favorite running mantra is “Every mile out there is a gift and every finish line is a gift.”(Amby Burfoot, winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon).