DF/HCC Program Affiliation

Biostatistics

Research Abstract

My primary research interest is in developing new statistical methods for disease surveillance and the application of those methods. For cancer surveillance, I have developed spatial and space-time scan statistics for proper statistical evaluation of geographical cancer clusters, to determine whether they are likely to be due to chance or not, adjusting for the multiple comparison inherent in the many potential cluster locations and sizes possible. The same methods can also be used for prospective surveillance for cluster detection and evaluation. While mostly used for count data such as cancer incidence or mortality, my research team has also developing spatial, temporal and space-time scan statistics for ordinal data such as cancer stage or grade and for continuous data such as cancer survival times.

In addition to my methodological work, I also collaborate on various types of cancer research projects as a biostatistician. This work includes health services research on cancer screening and other forms of prevention, nutritional cancer epidemiology studies and cancer surveillance efforts.

Publications

• Kulldorff M, Heffernan R, Hartman J, Assunção R, Mostashari F.A Space-Time Permutation Scan Statistic for Disease Outbreak Detection.PLoS Med 2005 Mar;2(3):e59.
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• Kulldorff M, Fang Z, Walsh SJ.A tree-based scan statistic for database disease surveillance.Biometrics 2003 Jun;59(2):323-31.
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• Kulldorff M, Hjalmars U.The Knox method and other tests for space-time interaction.Biometrics 1999 Jun;55(2):544-52.
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• Kulldorff M, Sinha R, Chow WH, Rothman N.Comparing odds ratios for nested subsets of dietary components.Int J Epidemiol 2000 Dec;29(6):1060-4.
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• Kulldorff M, Feuer EJ, Miller BA, Freedman LS.Breast cancer clusters in the northeast United States: a geographic analysis.Am J Epidemiol 1997 Jul 15;146(2):161-70.
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