Health-related Research Areas
- HIV
- Nutrition
- Exercise
- Obesity
- Mediterranean Diet
- Gluten-related disorders
- Depression
- Anxiety
Statistics-related Research Areas
- Meta-analysis
- Multilevel analysis
- Mediation/Moderation
- Biostatistics
- Structural equation modeling
Recent Initiatives:
Research Interests
There is a great importance in n health research of considering interactions among behavior, environment, and biomarkers and of working with multiple levels of data to examine interactions among variables. My research focus involves modeling the factors that influence health behavior and change to understand determinants of health prevention and intervention, using advanced statistical techniques that integrate individual-level psychological processes, biological influences and a broad range of social and environmental factors. In this pursuit, I have collaborated with a diverse range of scholars from other health-related disciplines, so that I will apply only the most advanced methodological and statistical techniques available in psychology and the health and biologically related fields. I also draw on these experiences to work on methodological and statistical aspects that help advance the discipline of applied statistics.
SIPED is a research group with research assistants from both statistics and health related disciplines.
My current research goal is to apply multilevel mediation/moderation modeling techniques to complex health topics like obesity and other immunology-related diseases that can be triggered by our health style behaviors, e.g., diet, exercise. One of the diseases I am focusing on is celiac disease, a disease with multiple layers including genomics, environment, and biological factors. Celiac disease and gluten sensitivity describe the spectrum of manifestation of a serious condition that appears to be affecting an increasing proportion of the population, producing a host of co-morbidities that have a significant impact on public health.
Recently I have been working and pilot testing innovative multilevel modeling techniques focusing on HIV, cardiovascular diseases, and the Mediterranean Diet scientific literature, projects funded by the University of Connecticut, NIH, and AHRQ.