Barbra Dickerman

Biography

Barbra Dickerman uses causal inference methods and large health databases to improve health decision-making. This work has helped to inform health decision-making at international levels, as well as the design and conduct of comparative effectiveness and safety studies at scale.

Barbra is Assistant Professor of Global Cancer Prevention in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a member of the Zhu Family Center for Global Cancer Prevention and CAUSALab.

She teaches causal inference methodology at the Harvard Chan School, where she also mentors junior investigators and students. She has developed several CAUSALab courses (on fundamentals of confounding adjustment, advanced confounding adjustment, and target trial emulation) which aim to make causal inference concepts and methods more accessible to a diverse global audience. In Summer 2025, these courses reached participants representing 38 countries and 200+ organizations, spanning both academia and industry.

Education and Training

• BSc,
  University of Pennsylvania
• MSc,
  Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
• PhD,
  Harvard University

Publications

• Variation in prostate-specific antigen levels by age, adiposity, race and ethnicity, and genetic risk: Implications for prostate cancer screening.

  Kensler KH, Baichoo S, Nuris-Souquet M, Morley F, Lee-Bravatti M, Pradhan P, Roscoe C, Dickerman BA, Iyer HS, Rebbeck TR. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2025 Apr 03

  PMID: 40178947

• Erratum: Comparison of the Test-negative Design and Cohort Design With Explicit Target Trial Emulation for Evaluating COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness.

  Li G, Gerlovin H, Figueroa Muñiz MJ, Wise JK, Madenci AL, Robins JM, Aslan M, Cho K, Gaziano JM, Lipsitch M, Casas JP, Hernán MA, Dickerman BA. Epidemiology 2025 05 01

  PMID: 40173425

• The Target Trial Framework for Causal Inference From Observational Data: Why and When Is It Helpful?

  Hernán MA, Dahabreh IJ, Dickerman BA, Swanson SA. Ann Intern Med 2025

  PMID: 39961105

• Evaluating recommendation-based dietary and physical activity strategies for prostate cancer prevention: a target trial emulation in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

  Guo F, McGee EE, Chiu YH, Giovannucci E, Mucci LA, Dickerman BA. Am J Epidemiol 2025 Feb 05

  PMID: 38973750

• A validated estimate of visceral adipose tissue volume in relation to cancer risk.

  Lu Y, Zhao YC, Liu K, Bever A, Zhou Z, Wang K, Fang Z, Polychronidis G, Liu Y, Tao L, Dickerman BA, Giovannucci EL, Song M. J Natl Cancer Inst 2024 Dec 01

  PMID: 39150790