Biostatistics

Contributions

The BSR contributes to an average of 30 grant submissions and 40 publications per year. These manuscripts and grants cover a wide variety of domains, including clinical investigations, cancer control, cancer epidemiology, biomarker development, mechanistic investigations, and methodological research. The BSR can provide unique insight into working with diverse populations based on extensive experience with multiethnic populations and the populations of the Pacific. The BSR has been in the forefront on methods used in the study of multiethnic and admixed populations. The BSR has created unique algorithms: to create ethnic-specific cancer incidence rates, accounting for the large percentage of multi-racial and multiethnic Hawaiʻi residents, to test for consistency in associations among ethnic groups as a within-project validation approach, and to disaggregate the role of ethnicity on cancer between shared lifestyle factors, genetics, misclassification and neighborhood factors. The BSR has also developed methodology for accurate measurement of diet and physical activity. In addition, the BSR has developed web-based project applications that can be accessed remotely by multiple users. An example is the PacTrac system, a nutritional tool for entry and analysis of dietary and physical activity records that incorporates foods and activities specific to children and adults in the Pacific, which was a joint project with the Nutritional Support Shared Resource. The BSR, working with the Genomics and Bioinformatics Shared Resource, as well as the Body Composition Laboratory Core Research Facility, has the ability to manage and analyze high-dimensional omics data (e.g., metabolomics, genomics, gut microbiome, imaging). The BSR has extensive experience in analysis of integrated data from diverse sources such as questionnaire, clinical and claims data, national registries, and biomarkers and omics.