Research partners
The Columbia Spatial Epidemiology Lab conducts research in close partnership with diverse scientific, clinical, policy and community-based organizations, working together to achieve shared goals of improving the health and well-being of diverse populations. Key partners include:
Brotherhood Incorporated
Chicago Center for HIV Elimination, University of Chicago
French National Institute of Health and Medical Research
New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Kirby Institute for Infection and Immunity in Society, University of New South Wales
Centre for Social Research in Health, University of New South Wales
Program for the Study of LGBT Health, Columbia University
HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, Columbia University
International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs, Columbia University
Center for Infection and Immunity, Columbia University
Data Science Institute, Columbia University
Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Issues, Columbia University
Columbia University Research Center
New York University Center for the Study of Asian American Health
University of Nairobi
Advisory Board
The Columbia Spatial Epidemiology Lab receives scientific guidance from an Advisory Board comprising relevant experts in their fields.
Christopher Browning, Professor of Sociology, The Ohio State University
Dr. Browning, PhD, is a Professor of Sociology whose research interests include the causes and consequences of community social organization; the neighborhood context of crime, risk behavior, and health; the long-term effects of maltreatment during childhood; and multilevel statistical models. His current projects apply the concepts of activity space and ecological networks to research on the mechanisms linking contextual exposures (e.g., neighborhoods and schools) to youth behavioral health and well-being. He is Principal Investigator on the Adolescent Health and Development in Context (AHDC) study - a large scale, longitudinal investigation of the link between sociospatial exposures and developmental outcomes among youth in Franklin County, OH.
Charles Branas, Chair, Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Dr. Branas, PhD, has conducted research that extends from urban and rural areas in the US to communities across the globe, incorporating place-based interventions and human geography. He has led win-win science that generates new knowledge while simultaneously creating positive, real-world changes and providing health-enhancing resources for local communities. His pioneering work on geographic access to medical care has changed the healthcare landscape, leading to the designation of new hospitals and a series of national scientific replications in the US and other countries for many conditions, including trauma, cancer, and stroke. He has worked internationally on four continents and led multi-national efforts, producing extensive cohorts of developing nation scientists, national health metrics, and worldwide press coverage.
Basile Chaix, Research Director, INSERM (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research)
Dr. Chaix, PhD, conducts research that seeks to understand how health disparities form as well as the mechanisms through which geographic life environments affect health to develop relevant intervention strategies that remove environmental barriers and create environmental opportunities for healthy lifestyles, especially as it relates to cardiovascular disease. He served as the lead investigator on the Residential Environment and Coronary Heart Disease (RECORD) study, an epidemiologic cohort of 7,300 participants from 1,915 neighborhoods in the Paris Ile-de-France region aiming to describe social and spatial disparities in health and understand the effects of geographic life environment on health.
Michael Emch, Professor and Chair, Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dr. Emch’s expertise is in infectious disease ecology, neighborhood determinants of health and geographic information science applications of public health. He leads the Spatial Health Research Group, which conducts research that explores spatio-temporal patterns of disease, primarily infectious diseases of the developing world. Disease patterns are studied using a holistic approach by investigating the role of natural, social, and built environments in disease occurrence in different places and populations. Diverse statistical and spatial analytical methods are informed by theory from the fields of medical geography, epidemiology, ecology, and others.
Sandro Galea, Dean and Robert A Knox Professor, Boston University School of Public Health
Dr. Galea, MD, PhD, MPH, previously held academic and leadership positions at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has published extensively in the peer-reviewed literature and is a regular contributor to a range of public media, about the social causes of health, mental health, and the consequences of trauma. He has been listed as one of the most widely cited scholars in the social sciences. He is chair of the board of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health and past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. Dr. Galea is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Marius Gilbert, Senior Research Associate, Belgium Fund for Scientific Research
Dr. Gilbert has broad interests in the spatial epidemiology of animal diseases and invasive species. An overarching theme is the attempt to better understand how changes in agriculture have transformed ecosystems and affected the conditions of emergence, spread and persistence of pathogens and invasive species. His main area of expertise includes the epidemiology of avian influenza, global changes in livestock production systems, and livestock distribution models. In 2006, he was awarded a permanent academic position with the Belgian FNRS. Since 2015, he has led the Spatial epidemiology Lab (SpELL).
Ichiro Kawachi, John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Social Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Dr. Kawachi, PhD, is broadly interested in the social determinants of population health and health disparities. His investigations span the range from macro-social determinants of population health (e.g. income inequality, social cohesion), to meso-level influences (neighborhood and workplace contexts), down to the individual-level (stress, and psychosocial risk factors for cardiovascular disease). He has made seminal contributions to the link between health and “social capital”, defined as the resources accessed through social networks. Dr. Kawachi is the co-editor (with Lisa Berkman) of the first textbook on Social Epidemiology, published by Oxford University Press in 2000 (2nd edition published in 2014, with Lisa Berkman & Maria Glymour), among many other books and publications.
Francine Laden, Professor of Environmental Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and the Brigham & Women’s Hospital
Dr. Laden’s, ScD, research interests focus on the environmental epidemiology of chronic diseases, including cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular disease. Her research has or is concentrated on the following categories of exposures: air pollution (from ambient and occupational sources), persistent organic pollutants (POPs; organochlorines), secondhand smoke, and the contextual environment (e.g. built environment and green spaces). She is specifically interested in the geographic distribution of disease risk, incorporating geographic information system technology into large cohort studies to explore risk factors such as the built environment and indicators of socioeconomic status, as well as air pollution.
Jamie Pearce, Personal Chair in Health Geography, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh
Dr. Pearce’s, PhD, work considers social, political, and environmental processes affecting social and spatial inequalities in health. His work has focused on the role of place in understanding health outcomes and health-related behaviors, including smoking status, physical activity and obesity. With colleagues at Edinburgh and Glasgow he has established the Centre for Research on Environment, Society & Health (CRESH). He is the Director of the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science which includes the ESRC funded Doctoral Training Partnership and supports social science doctoral students across Scotland.
John Wilson, Professor, Department of Sociology, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California
Dr. Wilson, PhD, directs the Spatial Sciences Institute as well as the Geographic Information Science & Technology (GIST) Graduate Programs and GIS Research Laboratory. His research is focused on the modeling of human and environmental systems and makes extensive use of GIS tools, spatial analysis techniques, and computer models. He has published numerous books and articles on these topics, including two edited volumes, Terrain Analysis: Principles and Applications (John Wiley and Sons, 2000) and the Handbook of Geographic Information Science (Blackwell Publishers, 2007). Much of this work is collaborative and cross-disciplinary in character with the general goal of improving our knowledge and understanding of the factors linking people, their environments, and human health.