For Powering Health Solutions through Data Science
The modern application of data sciences can advance public health and patient care and save millions of lives. YSPH and Yale are uniquely positioned to be international leaders during this transformative moment in health data collection, modeling, analysis and management. Public health modeling, biostatistics, biomedical data science, implementation science and health informatics are areas of excellence for which YSPH has received national and international attention. Faculty research – identifying patterns, curating phenotypes and revealing underlying biological processes for disease onset, progression and treatment – provides essential insights that help to prevent disease outbreaks, advance cures and inform policy globally.
The Biostatistics Department’s Health Informatics Division, the Center for Methods in Implementation and Prevention Science and the Public Health Modeling Unit (PHMU) are essential resources staffed by talented YSPH faculty and students who are revolutionizing research applications of health data. For example, the Health Informatics Division assesses and addresses public health risks; it uses cutting-edge forecasting and mitigation through the science of biostatistics, health informatics, and data sciences that use “big data,” including health, hospital, personal, social media, weather, satellite, cell phone, surveillance and geographic information systems.
YSPH researchers engage in precision medicine and, more broadly, precision public health. Faculty and students are developing powerful computational, statistical and visualization tools that use clinical, demographic, sensor, exposure and multi-omics data collected from millions of individuals through various biobanks (including the Generations Project at Yale) for personalized risk assessment, screening, treatment and monitoring. There is also a special emphasis on improving health equity through analytical advances. The crossdepartmental PHMU brings together researchers in epidemiology, genomics, biostatistics, operations research, decision science, causal inference and mathematical modeling to understand the dynamics of epidemics, such as HIV, tuberculosis and SARS-CoV2, and enteric infections, such as rotavirus and typhoid. The unit evaluates the epidemiological and economic trade-offs and population-level effectiveness of disease-mitigation strategies for both infectious and chronic diseases. The PHMU works with data from around the world and collaborates with partners on every continent. PHMU faculty are also leaders in methods development, pioneering new statistical, epidemiological and modeling approaches for addressing pressing public health problems.
Students who engage these data opportunities and master the methods of analysis will be the next generation of leaders in a world increasingly driven by complex data that must be integrated and understood to further human health. Students from our programs are already pursuing research careers in academia and holding leadership positions in clinical medicine and public health institutions around the world. We are especially motivated to train students from groups that are underrepresented in the quantitative sciences in public health.