Theodore Holford

Theodore Holford, Ph.D., is Susan Dwight Bliss Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology and Public Health (Biostatistics). His scholarly work involves the development and application of statistical methods in public health and the training of individuals developing careers in health research. He developed an approach for analyzing temporal trends in disease rates using the age-period-cohort modeling framework that has be used extensively in the analysis of cancer incidence and mortality trends. He currently has NCI funding for research that extends and applies his population model for lung cancer that can be used for evaluating cancer intervention strategies as part of the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET). Ongoing research using this model focuses on quantifying the effects of cigarette smoking policy on lung cancer mortality, as well as effects of screening and treatment. He has developed and applied methods for using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in environmental epidemiology. This work provides approaches for analyzing the effect of traffic related air pollution on childhood asthma. Finally, Dr. Holford has played a leading role in training both pre-doctoral and post-doctoral students in biostatistics and epidemiology, including assessment of the effects of environmental exposure on disease risk.