HSPH researchers honored at National Epidemiology Conference

July 26, 2011 — HSPH Prof. Marc Lipsitch, postdoctoral research fellow Tuula Oksanen, and doctoral student [[Pamela Rist]] were honored by their colleagues at the North American Congress of Epidemiology 2011, held in Montreal in June.

Lipsitch is lead author of a paper titled “Negative Controls: A Tool for Detecting Confounding and Bias in Observational Studies,” that was awarded the Kenneth Rothman Prize for the best manuscript published in Epidemiology in 2010.  According to a press release from the journal, the paper “addresses an underutilized but intuitively appealing approach in a clear and accessible way.” HSPH’s Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen and Theodore Cohen are co-authors.

Oksanen’s paper, “Self-Report as an Indicator of Incident Disease,” was chosen for The 2011 American College of Epidemiology Annals of Epidemiology Award, which honors the best manuscript published in the Annals during the previous year. In the paper, which describes Oksanen’s careful methodological work to assess the validity of adult reports of new diseases, she observes that respondents often fail to report their medical histories accurately.

Rist, SM ’09, SD ’12, received this year’s Lilienfeld Student Prize in general epidemiology for her paper, “Migraine and Functional Outcome From Ischemic Cerebral Events in Women,” which was published in Circulation. Her research focuses primarily on the effects on physical functioning or cognition of disorders affecting the brain such as stroke and migraine.

HSPH postdoctoral research fellow Adam Bernstein and alumna Erin Richman, MS ’09, SD ’11, were finalists for the student prize.

–Amy Roeder