School of Public Health (GSPH)

The NIH Common Fund Genotype-Tissue Expression project (GTEx) collected whole-genome sequencing and gene expression data from 47 tissues sites of hundreds of subjects. It generated a huge impact by providing tissue-level gene expression and expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) for over 7,000 publications. However, tissues are mixtures of myriad cells, and tissue-level gene regulation is affected by cellular compositions. To obtain cell-type-specific (CTS) effects, GTEx started to collect single-nucleus RNA-sequencing (snRNA-seq) data from eight tissue types.

Medication assisted treatment (MAT) is an evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) involving medication and behavioral therapy. Despite massive public expenditures to increase MAT access, MAT use remains low. Limited geographic access to MAT is a key barrier to OUD treatment because MAT requires frequent travel to providers. While expanding geographic access to MAT has been a policy priority, policymakers lack reliable, accurate measures of geographic access to MAT to guide planning efforts.

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.

Hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) is an autosomal dominant vascular disorder, afflicting approximately 1 in 5,000 people, that is characterized by development of arteriovenous malformations (AVMs). These fragile, direct connections between arteries and veins can lead to hemorrhage, anemia, brain abscess, or stroke. For lung, brain, and nasal lesions, the primary treatment options are invasive procedures that ablate, resect, or block flow through the AVM.

This AHRQ Mentored Research Scientist Career Development Award (K01) for Dr. Eric T. Roberts, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, will establish Dr. Roberts as a health economist with expertise in health insurance and health care policy for aging and low-income populations.

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).