Regular meetings will begin again in September. If you are a newcomer and would like to be added to our mailing list, please send us an email using the 'Contact' tab above. We look forward to seeing you in the fall!

April 11, 2013 Thomson House Room 404

Brittany McKinnon

Commentary

March 21, 2013 Thomson House Room 404

Erika Braithwaite

February 27, 2013 Thomson House Room 404

Laura Sang

February 7, 2013 Thomson House Room 404

Alissa Koski

January 17, 2013 Thomson House Room 405

Andrew Gray

December 12, 2012 Thomson House Room 405

Group discussion

November 22, 2012 Thomson House Room 403

Alissa Koski

November 1, 2012 Thomson House Room 403

Laura Sang

October 11, 2012 Thomson House Room 404

Tarik Benmarhnia

Complementary reading:

September 20, 2012

Jeremy Labrecque

April 11, 2012

Britt McKinnon

March 21, 2012: Causal Inference Methods for Observational Research 

Samantha Hajna

February 29, 2012

Dr. Ziad El-Khatib & Dr. Edson

February 8, 2012

Alissa Koski

Optional Reading:

January 18, 2012: Social Disadvantage in Physical and Mental Health

Leah Smith

Mezuk et al. Reconsidering the role of social disadvantage in physical and mental health: Stressful life events, health behaviours, race, and depression. Am J Epidemiol. 2010; 172:1238-1249.

Additional Readings:

December 7, 2011: Health, Safety, and Greening Vacant Urban Space

Jeremy Labrecque

Branas et al. A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of Health, Safety, and Greening Vacant Urban Space. American Journal of Epidemiology, 2011.

November 16, 2011: Effects of Prenatal Poverty on Infant Health 

Raluca Ionescu-Ittu 

Strully KW, Rehkopf DH & Xuan Z. Effects of prenatal poverty on infant health: State earned income tax credits and birth weight. American Sociological Review. 2010;75(4):534-562.

October 26, 2011: Pathogen Prevalence: A Predictor of Individualistic and Collectivist Values?

Thomas Charters

October 5, 2011: Perspectives in Vaccinology: A Changing Landscape

Dr. Ziad El-Khatib

Laurent-Ledru V, Thomson A & Monsonego J. Civil Society: A critical new advocate for vaccination in Europe. Vaccine. 2011;29:624-628. 

Gilca V, Sauvageau C, McNeil et al.; Setting priorities for new vaccination programs by using public health officers and immunization managers opinions. Vaccine. 2008;26:4204-4209.

September 14, 2011: Regression Discontinuity Design as a Method of Evaluating Health Policy

Angrist JD & Pischke JS. Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion. Princeton University press. 2009.

Dolores de la Mata. The Effect of Medicaid on Children's Health: A Rgression Discontinuity Approach. Health, Econometrics and Data Goup. 2011. http://www.york.ac.uk/res/herc/documents/wp/11_16.pdf

Additional Reading:

Marmer V, Feir D & Lemieux T. Weak Identification in Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Designs. 2011. Micro Theory Working Papers. vadim_marmer-2010-19, Microeconomics.ca Website, revised 12 Sep 2011.

May 4th, 2011: Debate Self-rated health

Luke Mondor & Brittany Mckinnon 

DeSalvo, K et al. (2005) Mortality prediction with a single general self-rated health question: A Meta-analysis. J Gen Intern Med. 20:267-275

Sen, A (2002) Health: perception versus observation. BMJ 324: 860-1

Dowd, J & Zajacova, A. (2010) Does self-rated health mean the same thing across socioeconomic groups? Evidence from Biomarker data. Annals of Epidemiology. 20:743-749

April 6th, 2011: Natural and Quasi-Experimental Design

Dr. Erin Strumpf

Required Readings:

Meyer, B (1995) Natural and Quasi-experiments in Economics. Journal of Business & Economic Statistics

Carpenter, C & Eisenberg, D (2009) Effects of Sunday Sales Restrictions on Overall and Day Specific Alcohol Consumption: Evidence from Canada. J Stud Alcohol Drugs

March 2, 2011: Value judgments in inequality measures

Dr. Sam Harper

Required readings:

Harper, S  et al. (2010) Implicit value judgments in the measurement of health inequalities. The Milbank Quarterly. 88(1) 4-29

Asada, Y (2010) On the choice of absolute or relative inequality measures. The Milbank Quarterly. 88(4) 616-622

King, N et al. (2010) We'll take the red pill: A reply to Asada. The Milbank Quarterly. 88(4) 623-627

February 2, 2011: Health Inequality

Jeremy Labreque

Required readings:

Andersson, F & Lyttkens, C. (1999) Preferences for equity in health behind a veil of ignorance. Health Econ 8:369

Schwappach, D.(2003) Does it matter who you are or what you gain? An experimental study of preferences for resource allocation. Health Econ 12:255

Recommended reading:

Norton, M & Ariely, D. (2010) Building a better America - One wealth quintile at a time

December 15: Debate ROOM 25

Helen Cerigo & Thomas Charters  

Role of epidemiologists as advocates

 "scientists should ignore policy questions to persevere in pursuit of their objective, which is knowledge.... The time for a scientist to be a political and social mover is after hours.” (Rothman, 1985)

"Scientists are obligated not only to discover new knowledge but also to ensure that discoveries are applied to improve health." (Brownson, 2006)

K.J. Rothman and C. Poole, Science and policy making, Am J Public Health 75 (4) (1985), pp. 340–341.

 N. Krieger, Questioning epidemiology: objectivity, advocacy, and socially responsible science. Am J Pub Health. 89 (1999), pp. 1151–1153.

November 24: Markov Chain Modelling 

Emilie Renahy

Required Readings:

Kaplan D (2008) An overview of markov chain methods for the study of stage-sequential developmental processes. Developmental Psychology 44(2) 457-467

McDonough P, Worts D, Sacker A (2010) Socioeconomic inequalities in health dynamics: A comparison of Britain and the United States. Social Science & Medicine 70, 251-260

September 29: Multilevel Analysis

Natalie Coyle & Maria Koh

Required readings:

Cerdá M, Diez-Roux AV, Tchetgen ET, Gordon-Larsen P, Kiefe C. (2010) The relationship between neighborhood poverty and alcohol use: estimation by marginal structural models. Epidemiology. Jul;21(4):482-9.

Diez Roux A & Mair C (2010) Neighbourhoods and health. Annals of the new york academy of Science. Issue: The Biology of Disadvantage (1186) 125-145

Recommended readings :

Hubbard AE, Ahern J, Fleischer NL, Laan MV (2010) To GEE or Not to GEE: comparing population average and mixed models for estimating the association between neighborhood risk factors and health. Epidemiology. Jul;21(4): 482-9