The Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics presents:

Neal D. Goldstein, PhD, MBI

Assistant Research Professor, Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health

Epidemiologist, Christiana Care Health System

"Bringing Classical Epidemiology to the Hospital: Social and Spatial Correlates of Infection"

Traditionally risk factors for neonatal infection in the intensive care unit (NICU) are related to characteristics of the baby (or mom). But, there may be other extrinsic factors at play, such as the provider team (who takes care of which babies) and location within the unit (environmental factors). Infectious disease epidemiology focuses on risk being related to a "triad" of factors including the host (baby), the relationship between the host and the environment (baby and the NICU), the relationship between the host and the agent (baby and the pathogen), and the relationship between the agent and environment (pathogen and the NICU). In this talk, I'll discuss how this classical view of epidemiology can help identify extrinsic risk factors for infection, and potentially what we can do about them.

Neal D. Goldstein, PhD, MBI is an epidemiologist at Christiana Care Health System (Newark, Delaware) and holds a faculty appointment in the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). He has an extensive experience in epidemiological analyses from secondary data sources, particularly electronic health records. His research spans several disciplines including vaccine-preventable diseases, sexual minority health and HIV, pediatric infectious diseases, and women’s health surrounding pregnancy. He writes a science blog, which is available at www.goldsteinepi.com/blog, and has authored a book on epidemiology and the electronic health record entitled Improving Population Health Using Electronic Health Records: Methods for Data Management and Epidemiological Analysis.