The Department of Health Studies (DHS) is the home within the Division of Biological Sciences for the fields of biostatistics, epidemiology, and health services research. Department faculty study the individual, collective, environmental, and organizational factors that affect the health of human populations. They also teach courses and develop methods of investigation for conducting research in these areas. In addition to biostatistics, epidemiology and health services research, DHS faculty draw on the disciplines of statistics, psychology, sociology, demography, and economics in their studies of health, health care, and biomedical science. The Department provides a unique environment where cross-disciplinary research in these areas of inquiry can flourish.
Research interests of DHS faculty include aging, demography, psychiatric epidemiology, developmental psychopathology, the organization and financing of health care, social network analysis, environmental epidemiology, cancer epidemiology, and evolutionary and infectious disease models, as well as methodological research in longitudinal data, survival analysis, clinical trials, Bayesian modeling, statistical computation, econometric models, and mortality studies.
Faculty members in the DHS have made important contributions to these areas, including developing methods for studying health risks in immigrant populations, estimating the prevalence of behavioral disorders among children in the general U.S. population, identifying factors that predict longevity in prostate cancer, developing new methods for monitoring pain in clinical trials, evaluating social costs of tobacco use, understanding how costs of health insurance affect consumer behavior, showing how regulation affects medical practice, describing how the social structure of neighborhoods affects community health, and describing relationships between obesity and cancer risk. A sample of specific research accomplishments of DHS faculty includes the following:
• The first population-based study to identify socioeconomic correlates of sleep quantity and quality using objective sleep measurement.
• Demonstrating that the timing of the first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine affected the on-time receipt of subsequent childhood immunizations for inner-city infants, evidence that was cited in the decision to re-institute the recommendation to begin the HBV vaccine series at birth following the removal of thimerasol from infant vaccines.
• The first national survey of (about one thousand) large medical groups, demonstrating that the use of organized processes to improve the quality of care for chronic diseases is uncommon in these groups, but is more common when physicians are given incentives from health plans to improve quality.
• The most comprehensive study to date of the problem of missing data in conditional logistic regression and related statistical models. These models are used extensively in epidemiology and in econometrics, areas where missing data are a persistent problem.
• One of the first studies to show that genetic determinants of human height are substantially dampened in populations living in nutritionally and hygienically deleterious environments early in life.
• Fundamental investigations of the effects of health insurance coverage on health care utilization.
• Research resulting in and validating the criteria used world-wide to diagnose attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
• The most widely cited study of prognosis for men diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer.
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Biostatistics
Dignam, James, Ph.D.
Dukic, Vanja, Ph.D.
Rathouz, Paul, Ph.D.
Thisted, Ronald, Ph.D.
VanderWeele, Tyler, Ph.D.
Epidemiology
Ahsan, Habib, MD, MMedSc
Kurina, Lianne, Ph.D.
Krishnan, Jerry, M.D. Ph.D.
Lahey, Benjamin, Ph.D.
Lauderdale, Diane, Ph.D.
Health Services Research
Cagney, Kathleen, Ph.D.
Casalino, Lawrence, M.D.,Ph.D.
Konetzka, Tamara, Ph.D.
Manning, Willard, Ph.D.
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Grant & Contract Administration |