Research in children's environmental health demonstrates that consequence of environmental exposures during critical periods in development can manifest as disease or dysfunction across the human life span. Children are one of the most vulnerable subpopulations for increased adverse health risks from factors including exposures to environmental contaminants, poor nutrition, and stress because their major organ systems are developing from conception through adolescence. These factors are multi-dimensional and complex ? not simple, single exposures related to a single health outcome. Statistical methods and study designs for analyzing the complex, high-dimensional data that arise in such settings are still relatively new and require knowledge of advanced statistical techniques. The Statistical Services and Methods Development Resource (SSMDR) consolidates multi-disciplinary expertise (statistics, epidemiology, bioinformatics) in a single faculty made available for collaboration with the broader children's environmental health research community through the Data Center.
The aims of the SSMDC are in four primary categories: service, collaborative research across the Children's Environmental Health Research consortium, methods development, and education/training on biostatistical techniques relevant to the Children's Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) Data Center.
Our specific aims are: 1) provide an integrated approach for statistical, epidemiological, and bioinformatics service to investigators collaborating with the Data Center; 2) support collaborative research across the Children's Environmental Health Research consortium; 3) conduct novel and innovative biostatistical and bioinformatic methods development in relevant areas to the CHEAR and the Data Center; and 4) provide statistical training for children's environmental health researchers by creating publicly available statistical software for analysis of the CHEAR data and developing publicly utilizable training/example datasets to be used for didactic learning through webinars related to children's environmental health. The achievement of these aims will advance the goals of the CHEAR Data Center and the larger CHEAR Network to maximize our understanding of the potential impact of environmental exposures on children's health by providing rigorous and innovative biostatistical/bioinformatics methods for analyzing children's environmental health data.
A well-designed epidemiologic study of children's health will be able to address the hypotheses the study is funded to investigate, but by accessing the resources of the CHEAR Data Center, studies will be able to exceed what they are funded to do and potentially accomplish research that was previously thought infeasible or too costly. Through the use of the CHEAR Data Center, investigators will be able to increase their productivity and advance the scientific community's ability to examine the environment on an exposome scale. Pooling multiple datasets in the Data Center repository in a cohesive and integrated manner will be made possible through the language standards we develop.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 14 publications