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Cell Reports. Medicine Apr 2022Susan Cheng is a clinical cardiologist, statistically trained epidemiologist, faculty mentor, and director of programs in cardiovascular population sciences, healthy...
Susan Cheng is a clinical cardiologist, statistically trained epidemiologist, faculty mentor, and director of programs in cardiovascular population sciences, healthy aging, and public health research. In this Q&A, she shares her academic journey, current research activities, mentoring, and future directions with Cell Reports Medicine.
Topics: Faculty; Female; Humans; Mentoring; Mentors
PubMed: 35522097
DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100596 -
American Journal of Epidemiology Mar 2022There have been over 100 years of literature discussing the deleterious influence of racism on health. Much of the literature describes racism as a driver of social...
There have been over 100 years of literature discussing the deleterious influence of racism on health. Much of the literature describes racism as a driver of social determinants of health, such as housing, employment, income, and education. More recently, increased attention has been given to measuring the structural nature of a system that advantages one racialized group over others rather than solely relying on individual acknowledgement of racism. Despite these advances, there is still a need for methodological and analytical approaches to complement the aforementioned. This commentary calls on epidemiologists and other health researchers at large to engage the discourse on measuring structural racism. First, we address the conflation between race and racism in epidemiologic research. Next, we offer methodological recommendations (linking of interdisciplinary variables and data sets and leveraging mixed-method and life-course approaches) and analytical recommendations (integration of mixed data, use of multidimensional models) that epidemiologists and other health researchers may consider in health equity research. The goal of this commentary is to inspire the use of up-to-date and theoretically driven approaches to increase discourse among public health researchers on capturing racism as well as to improve evidence of its role as the fundamental cause of racial health inequities.
Topics: Epidemiologists; Health Equity; Humans; Public Health; Racism; Systemic Racism
PubMed: 34564723
DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwab239 -
Frontiers in Genetics 2022A polygenic risk score estimates the genetic risk of an individual for some disease or trait, calculated by aggregating the effect of many common variants associated...
A polygenic risk score estimates the genetic risk of an individual for some disease or trait, calculated by aggregating the effect of many common variants associated with the condition. With the increasing availability of genetic data in large cohort studies such as the UK Biobank, inclusion of this genetic risk as a covariate in statistical analyses is becoming more widespread. Previously this required specialist knowledge, but as tooling and data availability have improved it has become more feasible for statisticians and epidemiologists to calculate existing scores themselves for use in analyses. While tutorial resources exist for conducting genome-wide association studies and generating of new polygenic risk scores, fewer guides exist for the simple calculation and application of existing genetic scores. This guide outlines the key steps of this process: selection of suitable polygenic risk scores from the literature, extraction of relevant genetic variants and verification of their quality, calculation of the risk score and key considerations of its inclusion in statistical models, using the UK Biobank imputed data as a model data set. Many of the techniques in this guide will generalize to other datasets, however we also focus on some of the specific techniques required for using data in the formats UK Biobank have selected. This includes some of the challenges faced when working with large numbers of variants, where the computation time required by some tools is impractical. While we have focused on only a couple of tools, which may not be the best ones for every given aspect of the process, one barrier to working with genetic data is the sheer volume of tools available, and the difficulty for a novice to assess their viability. By discussing in depth a couple of tools that are adequate for the calculation even at large scale, we hope to make polygenic risk scores more accessible to a wider range of researchers.
PubMed: 35251129
DOI: 10.3389/fgene.2022.818574 -
British Journal of Haematology Sep 2018
Topics: Adult; Child; Epidemiologists; History, 20th Century; Humans; Male; Precursor Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma; Prognosis; Wit and Humor as Topic
PubMed: 29808914
DOI: 10.1111/bjh.15423 -
Antimicrobial Stewardship & Healthcare... 2022
PubMed: 36712470
DOI: 10.1017/ash.2022.352 -
Laeknabladid Feb 2022
Topics: Communication; Humans
PubMed: 35103617
DOI: 10.17992/lbl.2022.02.673 -
American Journal of Epidemiology Jun 2021Matching epidemiology's aspirations to actual delivery of goods valuable for population health depends both on the scientific and operational capabilities of...
Matching epidemiology's aspirations to actual delivery of goods valuable for population health depends both on the scientific and operational capabilities of epidemiology and on the degree to which the goods meet its contract with society. Epidemiology's capabilities have advanced remarkably in recent decades, although research gaps have appeared during the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Epidemiology's social contract reflecting a dual commitment to science and health could arguably be entirely met by producing research results under conditions variously described as objective, impartial, neutral, or independent and handing such results to decision makers and the public at large. However, a closer examination shows that those four terms address sharply distinct issues, with distinct practical implications, and that the epidemiologist responsibility is de facto involved beyond providing research results. Hence the epidemiologist's engagement should encompass arguing from a science-for-health viewpoint and proactively driving the results into decision processes on public health issues.
Topics: COVID-19; Humans; Public Health; SARS-CoV-2
PubMed: 33324972
DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwaa272 -
Sleep Medicine Oct 2017
Topics: Epidemiologists; Self Report
PubMed: 28843388
DOI: 10.1016/j.sleep.2017.07.017 -
International Journal of... 2016The Spring 2016 issue of the International Journal of Telerehabilitation (IJT) presents original and innovative work in three diverse sections: usability, intervention,...
The Spring 2016 issue of the International Journal of Telerehabilitation (IJT) presents original and innovative work in three diverse sections: usability, intervention, and pedagogy, followed by a book review on teleaudiology. The contributors to this issue are notably multi-disciplinary and include an audiologist, computer scientists, engineers, an epidemiologist, occupational therapists, a rehabilitation counselor, a physician (physical medicine and rehabilitation), and speechlanguage pathologists. The common thread linking the Journal's authors and their manuscripts, is excellence in telerehabilitation related innovation.
PubMed: 27563385
DOI: 10.5195/ijt.2016.6197 -
Future Cardiology May 2017Ander Cohen speaks to Adam Price-Evans, Commissioning Editor of Future Cardiology: Alexander (Ander) Cohen MBBS (Hons), MSc, MD, FRACP is a vascular physician and...
Ander Cohen speaks to Adam Price-Evans, Commissioning Editor of Future Cardiology: Alexander (Ander) Cohen MBBS (Hons), MSc, MD, FRACP is a vascular physician and epidemiologist at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, King's College (London, UK). He graduated with honors in medicine and honors in surgery from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and became a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1990. He was awarded an MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London in 1991 with a thesis on the metabolic syndrome in South-Asian populations. In 1998, he was awarded an MD with a thesis on the epidemiology of venous thromboembolism and thromboprophylaxis. In addition to his clinical work, he is involved in designing, managing and analyzing clinical trials from Phase I to IV. He is the Chairman and a member of many international steering committees for multicenter trials, epidemiological and pharmacoeconomic studies, and was previously the Director of Clinical Research and an Epidemiologist in Thrombosis Research at King's College Hospital.
Topics: Biomedical Research; Epidemiologists; Factor Xa Inhibitors; Humans; London; Rivaroxaban; Venous Thromboembolism
PubMed: 28569545
DOI: 10.2217/fca-2017-0024