The Myrto Lefkopoulou Distinguished Lectureship
We are extremely pleased to announce that alumna Dr. Alisa Stephens-Shields (AM ’09, PhD ’12), Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, will be the recipient of the 2024 Myrto Lefkopoulou Distinguished Lectureship!
Dr. Alisa Stephens-Shields is scheduled to give an in-person lecture at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on Thursday, September 26th at 4:00 PM in Kresge G2 with a reception to follow in the Kresge Cafeteria.
A Discrete Choice Experiment to Enhance Participation and Diversity in Clinical Trials
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and other prospective studies are often challenged by slow enrollment, limited external validity, and underrepresentation of patients who identify as Black, Hispanic or Latino, female, and living in rural settings. The Behavioral Economics to Transform Trial Enrollment Representativeness (BETTER) Center was established to evaluate innovative, behavioral economics (BE)-informed strategies for increasing trial enrollment, retention, and representation in cardiovascular RCTs. In the first of three planned studies, we conducted a discrete choice experiment to estimate the effects of BE strategies, including opt-in versus opt-out consent, recruiter role, and types of financial incentives, on enrollment into a hypothetical RCT. We evaluated these strategies overall and separately among subgroups. Using mixed effects logit models followed by estimation of marginal risk differences, we found that participants were 11 percentage points (95% CI 8% to 13%) more likely to enroll using an opt-in versus opt-out recruitment strategy, 22 percentage points (95% CI 19% to 25%) more likely to enroll if approached by their regular doctor as compared to a non-physician research coordinator, and 65 percentage points (95% CI 61% to 70%) more likely to enroll if offered a cash incentive versus no incentive. Results were consistent across underrepresented groups. Ongoing work will test these and other BE strategies such as altruism or personal gain messaging for enrollment in real-life prospective cohorts and RCTs, ultimately leading to the identification and evaluation of optimal BE strategies for achieving diversity in cardiovascular RCTs.
Dr. Stephens-Shields has demonstrated her great capacity as both a methodologic and collaborative biostatistician and as a leader impacting health, statistical education, and inclusion in the field.
Dr. Stephens-Shields is currently an Associate Professor of Biostatistics at University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She received her B.S. in Mathematics from University of Maryland and her PhD from the department of Biostatistics at Harvard University in 2012. In 2021, she assumed the role of director of the Biostatistics and Data Science Core at the Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). In this role, she expanded the Center’s research to include pediatric HIV research and furthered statistical mentorship and training programs for HIV researchers at Penn.
In addition to her own teaching and guest lecturing, Dr. Stephens-Shields co-developed a new course for Penn’s Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology program. This class teaches causal inference methods for observational studies using approaches such as propensity-score weighting, matching, and adjustment, instrumental variables, marginal structural models to adjust for time-varying confounding, and sensitivity analyses. Dr. Stephens-Shields is also the course director for Design of Interventional Studies, a core course in Penn’s biostatistics doctoral program. She regularly leads causal inference workshops for researchers from industry and academia.
As the chair of Penn Biostatistics’ Student Recruitment Committee, Dr. Stephens-Shields has led efforts to foster diversity and to increase awareness of quantitative, health-focused careers. She is a regular facilitator at the Eastern North American Region (ENAR) Fostering Diversity Workshop and has been a frequent guest discussant at STATFest, an annual conference organized by the American Statistical Association (ASA) Committee on Minorities in Statistics. In 2021, she accepted an appointment as adjunct faculty at Harvard University, where she continues to provide career mentorship for students and junior faculty.
Dr. Stephens-Shields has demonstrated her expertise in diverse research settings. She served as the senior statistician on two large trials: the Randomized Evaluation of Trial Acceptability by Incentive (RETAIN) trial, and the Improving HPV Vaccination Delivery in Pediatric Primary Care trial (STOP-HPV). She has also served as the lead statistician for the Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Chronic Pelvic Pain (MAPP), where she contributed to the development of key outcome measures and led the MAPP investigative team in summarizing over a decade of research into empirically informed considerations for the design of future clinical trials.
About the Award
The Myrto Lefkopoulou Distinguished Lectureship was established in perpetuity in memory of Dr. Myrto Lefkopoulou, a faculty member and graduate of Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Lefkopoulou tragically died of cancer in 1992 at the age of 34 after a courageous two-year battle. She was deeply beloved by friends, students, and faculty.
Each year the lectureship is awarded to a promising statistician who has made contributions to either collaborative or methodologic research in the applications of statistical methods to biology or medicine, and/or who has shown excellence in the teaching of biostatistics. Ordinarily, the lectureship is given to a statistician who has earned a doctorate in the last fifteen years. The lecture is presented to a general scientific audience as the first Department colloquium of each academic year. The lectureship includes travel to Boston, a reception following the lecture, and an honorarium of $1000.
Nominations
Nominations are welcome for next year’s award, to be given in September 2024.
Please send nominations via email
Nominations should include a letter describing the contributions of the candidate, specifically highlighting the criteria for the award, and a curriculum vita. An other supporting materials would be extremely helpful to the committee.
All nominations must be received by Friday, July 19th, 2024.
Past Recipients
2023 Stephanie Hicks
2022 Jeffery T. Leek
2021 Antonio Gasparrini
2020 Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen
2019 Veera Baladandayuthapani
2018 Elizabeth Stuart
2017 Ciprian Crainiceanu
2016 Mahlet Tadesse
2015 Debashis Ghosh
2014 Tianxi Cai
2013 Nilanjan Chatterjee
2012 Rafael Irizarry
2011 Jeffrey Morris
2010 David Dunson
2009 Xihong Lin
2008 Heping Zhang
2007 Francesca Dominici
2006 Jianqing Fan
2005 Mark van der Laan
2004 Geert Molenberghs
2003 Marie Davidian
2002 Danyu Lin
2001 Bradley P. Carlin
2000 Steven N. Goodman
1999 Giovanni Parmigianni
1998 Kathryn Roeder
1997 Ronald S. Brookmeyer
1996 Trevor J. Hastie
1995 Hans-George Mueller
1994 Michael L. Boehnke
1993 Louise Ryan
