Blog

Congratulations to senior biostatistician Andrew Guide on first-authorship of "Balancing efficacy and computational burden: weighted mean, multiple imputation, and inverse probability weighting methods for item non-response in reliable scales," an article published in JAMIA: A Scholarly Journal of Informatics in Health and Biomedicine on August 13. Co-authors include assistant in biostatistics Shawn Garbett, senior biostatistician Xiaoke (Sarah) Feng, and professor Qingxia (Cindy) Chen, who is the paper's corresponding author, with colleagues in VICTR, DBMI, and Ohio State's Department of Internal Medicine. The study examined ways of interpreting non-responses to the Physical Activity Neighborhood Environment Scale (PANES) in the All of Us Social Determinants of Health survey and to what degree computationally intensive approaches are advisable. In the words of Guide and his co-authors, their goal is "to inform researchers on considerations for handling incomplete data in participant surveys, utilize the data received as efficiently and accurately as possible, and better understand how to use surveys with missingness to conduct accurate research." Guide, Garbett, Chen, and some other team members published another paper on interpreting All of Us data earlier this year; Guide, Garbett, and Feng also served as teaching asistants in this year's Summer Institute short course on the All of Us research program.

Figure 1 in Guide et al., "Balancing efficacy..." For the full caption, view the figure at its journal page or within the full paper.

Congratulations to postdoctoral fellow Jia Li, professor and chair Yu Shyr, and professor Qi Liu on the August 22 publication of Identification and multimodal characterization of a specialized epithelial cell type associated with Crohn’s disease (CD) in Nature Communications. Dr. Li is first author of the paper and Dr. Liu its corresponding author. The team's study of terminal ileum and ascending colon (LND) cells in CD patients has led to findings that "suggest a potential pathogenic role" for such cells in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). 

Figure 1 from the paper. Visit it at the publication site for the full caption.

This study was co-authored by professor Fei Ye.

Congratulations to PhD candidate Siwei Zhang, alumnus Nicholas Strayer (PhD 2020; now at Posit), senior biostatistician Yajing Li, and assistant professor Yaomin Xu on the publication of “PheMIME: an interactive web app and knowledge base for phenome-wide, multi-institutional multimorbidity analysis” in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association on August 10.

Congratulations to assistant professor Amber Hackstadt on the publication of "Effects of a Patient Portal Intervention to Address Diabetes Care Gaps: Protocol for a Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trial" in JMIR Research Protocols on June 28. Co-authors include senior biostatistician Zhihong Yu, as well as colleagues in Vanderbilt's Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, and Department of Biomedical Informatics. The study seeks to address consistency in preventive care among people with diabetes by applying "user-centered design sprint methodology to develop a patient portal intervention.

Figure 2 in the paper depicts the study recruitment results as a flow chart. 

Congratulations to associate professor Andrew Spieker on the publication of "The impact of different strategies for modeling associations between medications at low doses and health outcomes: a simulation study and practical application to postpartum opioid use." This article was published online ahead of print on June 21 in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Co-authors include recently retired associate Sharon Phillips, plus colleagues in Vanderbilt's Departments of Health Policy and Obstetrics and Gynecology. It reports on the simulation study conducted by Dr. Spieker and his collaborators "to assess the performance of several regression approaches to model the drug dose-response curve at low doses in a setting where no safe range exists" and to "demonstrate and empirically assess the use of these regression strategies in a practical scenario."

Figure S1 in the paper features graphical representations of various models. 

Panels (A) and (B) illustrate the simple linear model in the absence and presence (respectively) of a spike effect. Panel (C) illustrates the case in which dose group is categorized (with zero included as a category). Panels (C) and (D) illustrate the natural cubic spline model in the absence and presence (respectively) of a spike effect. Panel (F) illustrates the “slab-and-spline” model that is piecewise constant over the low-dose range but otherwise shares the properties of a natural cubic spline. Of note, the models presented in panels (A) and (D) invoke the safe-dose assumption as no spike effect is present.

This July 22 feature at VUMC News focuses on a study co-authored by senior biostatistician Elizabeth McNeer (who earned her MS from our program in 2018) and professor William Dupont.

This Nature Genetics paper was co-authored by associate professor Ran Tao.

Congratulations to associate professor and associate vice chair of equity, diversity, and inclusion Mario Davidson on the publication of Evaluating the Role of Competency-Based Behavioral Interviewing in Holistic Medical School Admissions, published online ahead of print today in Academic Medicine, the journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges. Dr. Davidson and his colleagues investigated the role of behavioral interviews in admission decisions and whether they help "reduce bias related to over-reliance on standardized metrics."