Epidemiology

My long term career goal is to accelerate the use of data to improve population health. As an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, I have focused my previous work on advancing access to biomedical data in public health. From working in several countries around the world, I have become acutely aware of the great potential for new discoveries offered by the vast amount of data on population health that is currently collected by researchers and health agencies.

Mobility, defined as an individual’s ability to move about effectively in his or her surroundings, is vital for the independence and quality of life of older adults. Despite the severe burden of mobility limitations on both the individual and the public health system, effective strategies to promote mobility are sparse. Environmental factors and brain aging are both associated with age-related mobility limitations.

Do Changes in Diet Quality in a Weight Loss Trial Affect Cardiometabolic Risk? Jessica Cheng Project Summary/Abstract Although the importance of diet for weight loss, the prevention of chronic disease, and overall health has long been clear to researchers, weight loss intervention research favors calorie and fat reduction approaches but does not rigorously assess and report the impact of interventions on diet quality. The proposed research project will assess diet quality change based on 24-hour dietary recall data collected as part of the SMARTER randomized control trial (R01 HL131583).