When COVID-19 burst onto the scene last winter, and Tony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was looking for a way to run massive, credible and rigorous trials of potential vaccines, he turned to experts at the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Co-principal investigators of the HVTN Statistics and Data Management Center include three researchers who are also University of Washington School of Public Health faculty: Peter Gilbert (Biostat), Holly Janes (Biostat), and Yunda Huang (Global Health).

Jonathan Wakefield, professor of biostatistics and statistics, is co-author of this paper that describes four extensions to previous work: (i) combining summary birth history data with full birth history data, (ii) modeling on a yearly scale, to combine data on a yearly scale with data at coarser time scales, (iii) adjusting direct estimates in Admin‐2 areas where we do not observe any deaths due to small sample sizes, (iv) acknowledge differences in data sources by modeling potential bias arising from the various data sources. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated racial disparities in healthcare and health outcomes. For example, hospitalization and mortality rates for Black Americans are two, even three, times higher than those for White Americans. These health disparities have rekindled a longstanding debate about the use of race in clinical practice and biomedical research. In a recently published New England Journal of Medicine article, five genetic researchers who self-identify as Black provided their perspective on the use of race in medicine.  

A flagship paper co-authored by scores of researchers from across the University of Washington – including scientists from the UW Schools of Public Health and Medicine and the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine – shows just how valuable whole-genome sequencing data, and the variants they reveal, are to the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders.

Ellen Wijsman will admit that she doesn’t have all the answers, but she might just have all the right questions. As Professor of Biostatistics in the UW School of Public Health and UW Division of Medical Genetics/Department of Medicine in the School of Medicine, she has a healthy skepticism for new scientific discoveries about Alzheimer’s disease.