News

March Health Equity Update

Thursday, April 4, 2024

The March Health Equity Update highlights the work that Theresa Green, PhD, MBA, does with resident education and health equity. 

Read the full article here: Health Equity Update

Air Quality in Schools: Shielding Kids with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities from COVID

Thursday, March 28, 2024

The COVID pandemic was a tough balancing act for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), many of whom struggle with masking and distancing. URMC researchers, including those from the UR CTSI, teamed up with the Mary Cariola Center to study ways to prevent COVID infections in the IDD community. Dr. Ann M. Dozier and Dr. Christopher Seplaki from Public Health Sciences collaborated on this project. This study, published in PLOS ONE, points to ventilation and air filtration as important tools to prevent COVID infections among children with IDD.

Dr. Veazie publishes on how to determine dependence across observations.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

It is common in applied research to analyze data from data generating processes with dependencies among random variables across observations. Such dependencies impact power calculations and standard errors. However, it is also common to mistake the structure of data for the structure of the data generating process and thereby to use inappropriate standard error estimators. The challenge is not merely to distinguish data from data generating processes but also to determine dependence. Dr. Veazie has published a paper in Ration Mathematica discussing the problem and providing a four-step guide, with examples, for determining dependence of random variables across observations.  Access paper through this link: Determining dependence among random variables across observations | Veazie | Ratio Mathematica (eiris.it)

Dr. Edith Williams is Director of Center for Community Health and Prevention

Monday, January 22, 2024

Dr. Edith Williams has been appointed as Director of Center for Community Health and Prevention. 

Read the full story here.

Drs. Veazie and Intrator present an alternative gamma distribution specification for modeling right-skewed variables

Friday, January 19, 2024

The Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) for parameters of the gamma distribution is commonly used to estimate models of right-skewed variables such as costs, hospital length of stay, and appointment wait times in Economics and Healthcare research.  The common specification for this estimator assumes the variance is proportional to the square of the mean, which underlies estimation and specification tests.  Drs. Veazie and Intrator present a specification in which the variance is directly proportional to the mean in their recent paper “Better performance for right-skewed data using an alternative gamma model” published in BMC Medical Research Methodology (2023) 23:298.  Link: Better performance for right-skewed data using an alternative gamma model | BMC Medical Research Methodology | Full Text (biomedcentral.com).

Dr. Francisco Cartujano's Interview with Channel 10 News

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Dr. Francisco Cartujano did an interview with Channel 10 News about how people can keep their 2024 resolution to stop smoking or vaping by joining The Wilmot Cancer Institute's programs. 

Read the full article here.