W. Dana Flanders Receives Abraham Lilienfeld Award
Dana Flanders, MD, DSc, MPH, Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Emory Rollins School of Public Health, was recently recognized with the 2019 Abraham Lilienfeld Award by the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association. Dr. Flanders received the award during the association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia and was introduced by Timothy L. Lash, DSc, MPH, Chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Rollins.
The Abraham Lilienfeld Award recognizes excellence in the teaching of epidemiology during the course of a career. Flanders’ longstanding contributions to epidemiological teaching are evident in the cadre of students he’s taught on both the master’s and doctoral level, as well as his various writings that have been used to teach epidemiology in classrooms across the globe.
“It’s a highpoint of my career,” says Flanders of the award. “It’s an honor to receive this recognition for teaching. I appreciate being acknowledged for this and want to thank the unknown person or people who recommended me.”
Flanders has been instrumental in the development and delivery of the methods curriculum in epidemiology at Rollins for more than 25 years and teaches two of the advanced courses in the doctoral curriculum.
“He’s a highly regarded epidemiology methodologist who has published on a wide range of epidemiologic methods, challenged conventional thinking in several regards, and really advanced the way that science is practiced,” says Lash. “He brings all of that expertise with him to the classroom. Flanders has a reputation for being reliably right, leading edge, and rigorous.”
Flanders says part of what keeps him passionate about his job is his genuine fascination surrounding new methods and ideas, and the possibilities for creativity and collaboration that come with sharing those ideas with others, either through teaching or writing papers.
His current areas of focus include study design and interpretation, causal inference, and using different approaches in methods to identify, address, and control confounding.
Flanders received his MD from the University of Vermont and his DSc and MPH from Harvard University. A member of the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program at Winship Cancer Institute, he has consulted on several projects for both the American Cancer Society and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
David Kleinbaum, PhD, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Epidemiology, received the Abraham Lilienfeld Award in 2006.