Research
Links: Center for Midlife Science, Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health
Departmental faculty assess health and chronic disease risk across the lifespan leading studies that focus in different lifestages, including studies of midlife women and the elderly, across mulitple mental and physical health domains.
Faculty lead studies of breast, cervical and ovarian cancer, prostate, oropharyngeal and lung cancer in the United States, Mexico and Thailand
Links: Center for Midlife Science
Faculty research includes cohort studies of cardiovascular disease and stroke, and change in cardiometabolic risk profiles as women age through the midlife.
The Department provides stewardship for several Data and Biospecimen Repositories that are available for masters theses, doctoral dissertations and faculty research on a wide range of topics relevant to chronic disease and aging. Many faculty also are co-Investigators on national studies and able to provide data access to interested students and faculty.
Links: Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Program, U-M Lifestage Exposure and Adult Disease Center (M-LEEaD)
Environmental and occupational epidemiology investigates the human health impacts of exposures to chemical pollutants and non-chemical stressors in people's homes, workplaces, and communities. Our faculty characterize exposure and health effects of air pollution, metals, pesticides, extreme temperature, phthalates and plasticizers, asbestos, noise and more with funded research programs focused on asthma, autism, and birth outcomes as well as on cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease, ovarian aging, dementia, and mortality in midlife and older adults. Our faculty also investigate gene-environment interactions and epigenetics, develop novel statistical methods to study multi-pollutant mixtures, and test the effectiveness of public health interventions.
Links: Center for Midlife Science
For over 20-years the Department has provided leadership in the Genetic Epidemiology of Cardiovascular Disease including the Rochester Heart Study and GENOA study. Faculty are also engaged is genomic and epigenomic studies of cancer, reproductive aging, and systemic lupus erythematosus.
Links: Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health
Healthy People 2020 defines a health disparity as "a particular type of health difference that is closely linked with social, economic, and/or environmental disadvantage. Health disparities adversely affect groups of people who have systematically experienced greater obstacles to health based on their racial or ethnic group; religion; socioeconomic status; gender; age; mental health; cognitive, sensory, or physical disability; sexual orientation or gender identity; geographic location; or other characteristics historically linked to discrimination or exclusion.”
Faculty: Melissa Beck, James Buszkiewicz, Nancy Fleischer, Alexis Handal, Carrie Karvonen-Gutierrez, Alison Mondul, Sung Kyun Park, Eduardo Villamor, Xin Wang
Links: Center for Midlife Science
The Department of Epidemiology faculty focus on many aspects metabolic disease including
the patterns and impact of nutrition among children and adults, the epidemiology of
and mechanistic underpinnings of obesity among children and adults, the health-related
consequences of obesity and excess fat mass, and the metabolic activity of adipose
tissue including adipokines and inflammatory biomarkers. Further, many faculty examine
metabolic outcomes such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and a constellation of cardio-metabolic
diseases.
Links: Center for Midlife Science
Arthritis and associated musculoskeletal disorders are the leading cause of adult-related disability globally. Using data from several longitudinal cohort studies housed within the Department of Epidemiology, faculty are investigating the causes and mechanisms underlying musculoskeletal conditions including osteoarthritis and osteoporosis and using these phenotypes to understand the impact on subjective and objective physical functioning and disability across the lifespan. Further, several ongoing collaborations between Department faculty and colleagues in the Medical School exist including clinical research studies of smoking and musculoskeletal disease and the creation and stewardship of registries for orthopedic conditions.
Links: Center for Midlife Science
Departmental faculty have provided leadership in Women's Health for over thirty years including stewarding two twenty-year cohort studies of the menopausal transition and midlife health. Faculty research includes projects on sex, gender and cancer, cardiovascular disease and stroke, reproductive aging, and musculo-skeletal health
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- Links: Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Program , U-M Lifestage Exposure and Adult Disease Center (M-LEEaD)
Environmental and occupational epidemiology investigates the human health impacts of exposures to chemical pollutants and non-chemical stressors in people's homes, workplaces, and communities. Our faculty characterize exposure and health effects of air pollution, metals, pesticides, extreme temperature, phthalates and plasticizers, asbestos, noise and more with funded research programs focused on asthma, autism, and birth outcomes as well as on cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease, ovarian aging, dementia, and mortality in midlife and older adults. Our faculty also investigate gene-environment interactions and epigenetics, develop novel statistical methods to study multi-pollutant mixtures, and test the effectiveness of public health interventions.
Links: Integrated Training in Microbial Systems (ITIMS)
Infectious disease transmission modeling takes a systems approach to understanding the dynamics of how infectious diseases move through populations. Transmission can take place in many different settings and media. Our faculty are involved in a variety of projects, including how environmental processes influence the transmission of gastrointestinal pathogens, how the multisite nature of HPV influcences disease dynamics, and how influenza is transmitted along social networks in a college setting.
Links: Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET), M-HOC
From the inner workings of a single cell to population-wide cancer registries, cancer modeling must cross large spatial and temporal scales. Our faculty are experts in connecting population-level data to underlying carcinogenesis mechanisms and are involved in a variety of projects investigating how risk factors (e.g. smoking, HPV) are associated with and lead to certain cancers, as well as the impact of prevention strategies such as screening, tobacco control or vaccination against infectious agents that cause cancer.
Links: Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET), Center for the Study of Complex Systems, Tobacco and lung cancer modeling group
Health behaviors are determined by individual characteristics as well as environmental and social factors. Systems modeling can be used to investigate the consequences of complex interactions between individual and societal factors, as well as the temporal dynamics of behavior, exposure and disease processes. Our faculty are using system modeling approaches (deterministic and stochastic dynamical systems, network modeling, agent-based modeling) to understand the impact of interventions and social and population dynamics on health behaviors (e.g. smoking, alcohol, and sugar consumption) and on its related disease outcomes.
Links: Working Group on Modeling Health and Economic Outcomes, Michigan Model for Diabetes
Chronic disease development and progression is a complex and multifactorial process. Mathematical models on the natural history of chronic diseases allow one to explore the impact of prevention and treatment interventions at different stages of the disease process. Our faculty are using state-transition models (Markov and microsimulations) to investigate the effects of prevention and treatment strategies on the incidence and mortality of diabetes, renal disease and other chronic diseases.
Links: Center for the Study of Complex Systems
Our work in each of these different application areas often necessitates the development of new tools and approaches. Our faculty develop new modeling methods, computational tools, and mathematical theory to tackle questions in parameter estimation, uncertainty quantification, stochastic modeling, model reduction, network modeling, game/decision theory models of behavior, and more. These methods both provide new tools for a range of problems, and also help us solve practical questions in each of the application areas above.
- Faculty: Kelly Bakulski, Miatta Buxton, Eduardo Villamor
Links: Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, University of Michigan Stroke Program
Faculty research includes studies of a broad range of determinants related to social disadvantage and forms of bias and discrimination that produce health disparities in the general population, and the biological pathways that may account for these disparities
Links: Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, Center for Midlife Science
Faculty research includes studies of the role of individual and social exposures at different stages of the life course, and how they are related to the development of poor health outcomes
Links: Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, Social Environment and Health Program
Faculty research examines the role of the built and social environment on a broad array of health outcomes, including disability, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and cognitive function. This research draws on numerous sources to capture the built and social environment, including air pollution data, climate data, business data, census data, and virtual neighborhood audits using Google Street View.
Health in All Policies is an approach to public policies across sectors, in order to improve population health and health equity.
This area of research focuses on the social and psychological determinants of psychiatric, general mental health and quality of life outcomes.
This area uses complex systems approaches to understand how social dynamics and processes affect health in individuals and populations
Links: Bio-Social Methods Collaborative
Faculty working in this area examine biological mechanisms underlying relationships between social/psychosocial exposures and health outcomes, as well as interactions between social and biological factors. Examples include studies of telomere length, DNA methylation, and gene-environment interactions.
Links: Office of Global Public Health
Global social epidemiology is the study of how social structures, institutions, and relationships influence health, and the distribution of health, within the global context. The focus is on equity, within and between countries. Research moves beyond the concerns of high-income countries only, to understand the broader reach of social determinants.