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Emory Rollins School of Public Health
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Howard  Chang

Professor

Faculty, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics

Jointly Appointed, Environmental Health

My primary research interest is in the development and application of statistical methods for analyzing complex spatial-temporal exposure and health data. Our current projects focus on two broad areas of population health: (1) exposure assessment for air quality and extreme weather events, especially under a changing climate, and (2) health effect estimation and impact assessment leveraging large databases, such as birth/death certificates, hospital billing records, electronic health records, and disease surveilleince systems. I also have collaborative experience in ecology, infectious disease, social epidemiology, and community intervention trials.

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Current Projects:

1. Data Integration Methods for Environmental Exposures with Applications to Air Pollution and Asthma Morbidity.

2. Extreme Heat Events and Pregnancy Duration: a National Study

3. Dust Storms and Emergency Department Visits in Four Southwestern US States

4. Spatio-temporal Data Integration Methods for Infectious Disease Surveillance.

5. Neighborhood transportation vulnerability and geographic patterns of diabetes-related limb loss.

Contact Information

1518 Clifton Rd., NE ,

Atlanta , GA 30322

Mailstop: 1518-002-3AA

Phone: (404) 712-4627

Fax: (404)727-1370

Email: howard.chang@emory.edu

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Areas of Interest

  • Air Pollution
  • Biostatistics
  • Climate and Health
  • Environmental Health
  • Epidemiology
  • Exposure Assessment
  • Infectious Disease
  • Spatial Analysis/GIS

Education

  • PhD 2009, Johns Hopkins University
  • BSc 2004, University of British Columbia

Courses Taught

  • BIOS 525: Longitudinal Data Analysis

Publications

  • , , A Bayesian framework for incorporating exposure uncertainty into health analyses with application to air pollution and stillbirth., Biostatistics, ,
  • , , A hierarchical model for analyzing multisite individual-level disease surveillance data from multiple systems, Biometrics, ,
  • , , Time-series analysis of daily ambient temperature and emergency department visits in five US cities with a comparison of exposure metrics derived from 1-km meteorology products, Environmental Health, 20,
  • , , A comparison of statistical and machine learning methods for creating national daily maps of ambient PM2.5 concentration., Atmospheric Environment, 222,
  • , , A spatial hierarchical model for integrating and bias-correcting data from passive and active disease surveillance systems, Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Epidemiology, 35,
  • , , A Bayesian ensemble approach to combine PM2.5 estimates from statistical models using satellite imagery and numerical model simulation, Environmental Research, 178,
  • , , Time-Series Analysis of Air Pollution and Health Accounting for Covariate-Dependent Overdispersion, American Journal of Epidemiology, 187,
  • , , Projecting health impacts of climate change: embracing an uncertain future., Chance, 30, 55-61
  • , , Time-series Analysis of Heat Waves and Emergency Department Visits in Atlanta, 1993 to 2012, Environmental Health Perspectives, 125, 057009
  • , , Assessment of critical exposure and outcome windows in time-to-event analysis with application to air pollution and preterm birth study., Biostatistics, 16, 509-521
  • , , A statistical modeling framework for projecting future ambient ozone and its health impact due to climate change., Atmospheric Environment, 89, 290–297
  • , , Calibrating MODIS aerosol optical depth for predicting daily PM2.5 concentrations via statistical downscaling., Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, 24, 398-404
  • , , A spatial time-to-event approach for estimating associations between air pollution and preterm birth., Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C, 62, 167-179
  • , , Time-to-event analysis of fine particle air pollution and preterm birth: results from North Carolina, 2001-2005 (with invited commentary)., American Journal of Epidemiology, 175, 91-98
  • , , Estimating the acute health effects of coarse particulate matter accounting for exposure measurement error., Biostatistics, 12, 637-652