Michael Hudgens to study vaccine effectiveness
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Michael Hudgens, PhD, research associate professor in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics, has been awarded an R01 grant worth over $1 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to develop statistical methods for quantifying the effects of interventions to prevent infectious diseases.The main motivating examples for the research are studies of vaccine effectiveness. Two particularly challenging problems in vaccine studies entail assessing (i) indirect effects of vaccination and (ii) vaccine effects on post-infection endpoints. Evaluating (i) is a non-standard problem because indirect effects measure the effect of vaccinating one individual on another individuals health outcome. Assessing (ii) is challenging because infected vaccinees may not be comparable to infected controls. The proposed research will adapt and develop modern causal inference methodology for use in evaluating (i) and (ii). Similar research will be conducted motivated by studies to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child where issues similar to (ii) arise.
The grant includes a subcontract to Dr. M. Elizabeth Halloran |
