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In the News

Headlines featuring UW Biostatistics people and research.
India mass cremation site, photo courtesy Atul Loke for NYTimes
India mass cremation site, photo courtesy Atul Loke for NYTimes
India is Stalling the W.H.0.'s Efforts to Make Global Covid Death Toll Public
New York Times,

Jon Wakefield, UW professor of statistics and biostatistics who played a key role in building the model used for estimates of the World Health Organization global data of COVID death estimates is quoted in this story and says the numbers represent what statisticians and researchers call “excess mortality” — the difference between all deaths that occurred and those that would have been expected to occur under normal circumstances.

Close up of different multivitamin and supplement pills
Close up of different multivitamin and supplement pills
Do multivitamins and supplements like cocoa flavanols keep cancer, heart disease away?
Fred Hutch News,

“It’s a multivitamin industry with really limited data to support their use,” said Dr. Garnet Anderson ('89), director of the Public Health Sciences Division of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “At least not here in the U.S. where we have access to high-quality foods.”

Daniela Witten
Daniela Witten
Written by Witten: So long, and thanks for all the tips
Insitute of Mathematical Statistics,

Daniela Witten shares tips for PhD students in a post published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

Xihong Lin
Xihong Lin
Marvin Zelen Leadership Award in Statistical Science
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health,

Internationally renowned biostatistician Dr. Xihong Lin, Professor of Biostatistics and Coordinating Director of the Program in Quantitative Genomics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Professor of Statistics at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University, will be the recipient of the 2022 Marvin Zelen Leadership Award in Statistical Science 

Medical staff review mammogram on computer screen. Photo by Robert Hood / Fred Hutch News Service
Medical staff review mammogram on computer screen. Photo by Robert Hood / Fred Hutch News Service
Getting real(istic) about overdiagnosis in breast cancer screening
Fred Hutch News,

In a new study, co-authored by Biostatistics faculty members Lurdes Inoue and Ruth Etzioni, researchers show reports of mammograms’ harms were exaggerated.

Global visualization of inferred human ancestral lineages
Global visualization of inferred human ancestral lineages
Massive New ‘Human Family Tree’ Includes 27 Million Ancestors
Gizmodo,

A team of scientists has combined modern and ancient genomes to build a new “genealogy of everyone,” in an achievement that sets the groundwork for future studies into our evolution and global spread. UW Research Professor of Biostatistics Sharon Browning is quoted.

Gilbert presentation, Biostatistics Colloquium 2018
Gilbert presentation, Biostatistics Colloquium 2018
SARS-CoV-2 mutations associated with COVID-19 related hospitalizations
Fred Hutch Science Spotlight,

A multi-division collaboration took a broad, sequence-based approach to reveal which SARS-CoV-2 proteins may drive COVID-19 related hospitalization. These findings were published recently in Scientific Reports. Fred Hutch researcher and University of Washington Professor of Biostatistics Peter Gilbert contributed to this work.

Masked people walking down a crowded street
Masked people walking down a crowded street
Pandemic Endgame: What ‘Endemic’ Covid Means—And When We May Get There
Forbes,

Faculty member M. Elizabeth Halloran, who is also an epidemiologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center , says we have not yet reached a stable state with Covid, as evidenced by the “vertical rise of omicron cases” and it was “hard to say” when that might happen, saying, it would depend on the level of immunity within the population and how the virus evolves.