About the Authors

Jennifer Ahern, Ph.D., M.P.H., is the Associate Dean for Research and Associate Professor of Epidemiology at University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. She examines the effects of the social and physical environment, and programs and policies that alter the social and physical environment, on many aspects of health (e.g., violence, substance use, mental health, and gestational health). Dr. Ahern has a methodological focus to her work, including application of causal inference methods and semi-parametric estimation approaches, aimed at improving the rigor of observational research and optimizing public health intervention planning. Her research is supported by a New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of the Director.

Kate E. Andrade, M.P.H., is a doctoral candidate in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, University of Minnesota. Her interests include applied research methods for social epidemiology, causal inference, and consequential epidemiology. Her dissertation work is exploring different analytic techniques in neighborhood effect studies.

David M. Betson, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame. His research examines the impact of government on the distribution of income and wealth in the United States with a particular focus on the measurement of poverty. He was a member of the NRC Panel on Poverty Measurement that in 1995 issued a series of recommendations that has led to the new Supplemental Poverty Measure.

Melody L. Boyd, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at The College at Brockport, State University of New York. Her research focuses on urban poverty, housing, neighborhoods, race, and social policy.

Magdalena Cerdá, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of emergency medicine at the University of California at Davis School of Medicine. In her research, Magdalena integrates approaches from social and psychiatric epidemiology to examine how social contexts shape violent behavior, substance use, and common forms of mental illness. Her research focuses primarily on two areas: (1) the causes, consequences, and prevention of violence and (2) the social and policy determinants of substance use from childhood to adulthood.

Stefanie DeLuca, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research uses sociological perspectives to inform education and housing policy. She has carried out mixed-methods studies that incorporate qualitative research into experimental or quasi-experimental designs. Her new book address the children of the Moving to Opportunity Study as they transition to adulthood in Baltimore: Coming of Age in the Other America.

M. Maria Glymour, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Dr. Glymour's work focuses on evaluating social determinants of healthy aging, emphasizing methods to overcome causal inference challenges in observational data.

Peter J. Hannan, M.Stat., was a Senior Research Fellow in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. Mr. Hannan's research interests included methodological issues with clustering in community trials, multiple imputations, Bayesian statistical analysis, and correspondence analysis. He was involved with the Minnesota Heart Health Program, was a statistical consultant to David Murray's classic text "Design and Analysis of Group Randomized Trials," and has done statistical analysis and power calculation sections for many group randomized trials implemented in the Division, and collaborated on a number of methodological papers in his research interest areas. He is widely recognized as a leader in the design and analysis of community trials. Mr. Hannan died from natural causes on September 28, 2015.

Sam Harper, Ph.D., is trained in epidemiology at the University of South Carolina, the US National Center for Health Statistics, and the University of Michigan. His research focuses on measurement and analysis of social and economic determinants of health using routinely collected data and the use of quasi-experimental and experimental study designs to inform policy. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics & Occupational Health at McGill University.

Ashley Hirai (Schempf), Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist at the Maternal and Child Health Bureau. In this role, she applies technical expertise in perinatal epidemiology, GIS, and advanced research and evaluation methods to inform and improve various programs and initiatives. Her research focuses on perinatal disparities and policy-relevant strategies to reduce inequality.

Alan E. Hubbard, Ph.D., is the Head of Biostatistics at University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. Dr. Hubbard is the Principal Investigator of a study of statistical methods related to patient-centered outcomes research among acute trauma patients (PCORI), head of the computational biology Core D of the SuperFund Center at UC Berkeley (NIH/EPA), as well a consulting statistician on several federally and foundation projects, including a study to measure the impacts of sanitation, water quality, hand washing, and nutrition on child growth and development. He has published over 200 articles and worked on projects ranging from molecular biology of aging, wildlife biology, epidemiology, and infectious disease modeling, but most of his work has focused on semi-parametric estimation in high-dimensional data. His current methods-research focuses on statistical inference for data-adaptive parameters.

Barbara A. Israel, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., is Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. Dr. Israel has extensive experience conducting, evaluating, disseminating, and translating findings from community-based participatory research (CBPR) projects in collaboration with partners in diverse communities. Her research interests and publications are in the areas of: the conduct of CBPR; the evaluation of CBPR partnerships; the social and physical environmental determinants of health and health inequities; the relationship among stress, social support, control, and physical and mental health; and evaluation research methodologies.

Pamela Jo Johnson, M.P.H., Ph.D., is Associate Professor, Center for Spirituality and Healing, with graduate faculty appointments in the Divisions of Epidemiology and Community Health and Health Policy and Management, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota. She is a health services epidemiologist who focuses on social disparities in health and healthcare; access to healthcare; and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Her current work is focused on CAM use in diverse populations, well-being promotion in midlife, and integrative health services research. She is particularly interested in the measurement and methodological issues inherent in each of these areas.

Saffron Karlsen, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer in Social Research at the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. Her work examines the processes by which ethnicity becomes meaningful in people's lives: as aspects of personal identity and in relation to particular social outcomes, such as health and socioeconomic position. This work has examined, in particular, the influence of power imbalances on ethnic inequalities, evidenced in different forms of racist victimization and social inclusion/exclusion.

Katherine M. Keyes, Ph.D., is an associate professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Katherine's research focuses on life course epidemiology with particular attention to psychiatric disorders and injury, including early origins of child and adult health and cross-generational cohort effects on substance use, mental health, and chronic disease.

Paula M. Lantz, Ph.D., M.S., is Professor of Public Policy and Associate Dean for Research and Policy Engagement in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, where she is also Professor of Health Management and Policy in the School of Public Health. Professor Lantz is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. As a social demographer/epidemiologist, her research focuses on public policies and other interventions aimed at improving population health and that address social inequalities in health over the life course. She is currently conducting research regarding the potential of social impact bonds/pay for success strategies in addressing the social determinants of health in low-income communities.

John Lynch, Ph.D., is a Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Adelaide, Australia. John's research focuses on improving health and development outcomes for disadvantaged children through conducting pragmatic randomized control trials, analyses of large cohort studies, and whole-of-population linked government and non-government administrative and service data.

Lynne C. Messer, Ph.D., is a social, environmental, and reproductive/perinatal epidemiologist whose substantive work focuses on the social-structural determinants of maternal and child health disparities within the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease framework. Methodologically, her work entails better-defining neighborhood environments, developing environmental exposure measures for a variety...