The purpose of the Scientific Dissemination Committee is to promote the scientific work of the society, its members, and the field of epidemiology to both the scientific community and the general public through a variety of means, including podcasting, twitter and other mediums and through actively engaging with the journal of the society, the American Journal of Epidemiology, to consider ways in which to optimize function of the society and of the journal for mutual benefit.
Nichole Austin
Scientific Dissemination Committee Co-Chair
Nichole Austin is an Assistant Professor in the School of Health Administration at Dalhousie University. She holds a PhD in epidemiology from McGill University. She is broadly interested in health policy evaluation, with particular interests in reproductive health and health inequities. The majority of her work uses quasi-experimental designs to assess the impact of various health policy shifts in the US, Canada, and beyond. She also collaborates with interdisciplinary teams on topics ranging from primary care reform and medication management to methods development.
Contact
Sir Charles Tupper Medical Building, 2nd floor
5850 College Street
PO Box 15000
Halifax, NS B3H 4R2 Canada
nichole.austin@dal.ca
Ghassan Hamra
Scientific Dissemination Committee Co-Chair
I am an environmental and occupational health researcher. The ultimate goal of my work is to improve population health by identifying agents that cause disease and can be removed from our environment. I am particularly interested in studying exposures as complex mixtures. This is a result of the belief that most diseases are the result of a complex process that is influenced (both negatively and positively) by a wide range of environmental contaminants, social conditions, and even products we use in day to day life.
I employ Bayesian methods to achieve my research goals. Practically speaking, the machinery of Bayesian methods (Markov chain Monte Carlo) allows a great deal of flexibility in model specification and allows us to examine exposures as mixtures in ways that traditional statistical tools are simply incapable of handling. This comes with a computational cost (some models can take days to run), but one that can be well worth it.
Contact
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
615 N Wolfe Street
Room E7650
Baltimore, Maryland 21205
443-287-0122
ghamra1@jhu.edu
Laura Balzer
Scientific Dissemination Committee Co-Chair
Laura B. Balzer is an Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. Her expertise is in causal inference, machine learning, and messy real-world data. Dr. Balzer’s work addresses challenges in the design and analysis of both randomized trials and observational studies and has largely been motivated by ongoing collaborations in Uganda and Kenya. She is the Primary Statistician for several studies aiming to eliminate HIV and improve community health in rural East Africa (e.g., www.searchendaids.com). Overall, Dr. Balzer’s work is informed by cross-disciplinary, real-world problems and aims to ensure methodological advances in academia translate into real-world impact.
Contact
Associate Professor of Biostatistics
School of Public Health
University of California, Berkeley
2121 Berkeley Way, 5th Floor Berkeley, CA 94720-7360
laura.balzer@berkeley.edu
@LauraBBalzer
SCIENTIFIC DISSEMINATION COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Steven Barger
Ariel Beccia
Sue Bevan
Lori Biddle
Abigail Cartus
Zahra Clayborne
Michelle Dimitris
Galit Dunietz
Hamid Ferdosi
Marzieh Ghiasi
Gregg Gonsalves
Etienne Holder
Mustafa Hussein
Walter Kukull
Joanna Maselko
Nisha Nair
Rohit Ojha
Kimberly Parra
Carly Rodriguez
Enrique Schisterman
Srishti Shrestha
Kendra Sims
Sevly Snguon
Steven Stovitz
Jasmine Sweeting
Yacob Tedla
Harriett Telljohann
Larisa Tereshchenko
Kazuki Yoshida