Here, we explore Theodore Holford’s work in Biostatistics in the Yale University School of Public Health and his current research into how lung cancer is affected by cigarette smoking
Theodore Holford is Susan Dwight Bliss Professor Emeritus of Biostatistics in the Yale University School of Public Health. After completing his PhD training at Yale University, he joined the faculty in 1973, and he was Head of the Department of Biostatistics for seventeen years. His research during this time was on the development and application of statistical methods in medical science.
In 1981-1982, he received an Eleanor Roosevelt International Cancer Fellowship at Oxford University, which supported his initial work on the study of time trends using age-period-cohort models. He is also the recipient of the Wakeman Award for Research in the Neurosciences and a fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and the American Statistical Association.
Cigarette smoking and lung cancer research
Holford’s current research is the development of population models that characterize temporal trends in smoking history for a population and quantifying the impact that has on public health. This effort is funded by the National Cancer Institute and is part of the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET). Lung cancer is the site that Holford is studying, which is especially affected by cigarette smoking.
The age-period-cohort modeling framework is especially useful in characterizing smoking history because it captures the effects of age, period or calendar year, and birth cohort or generation. Habits affecting health often change with age, and generations often influence their cohort in forming a similar behavior history that impact health.
Surveys conducted by the National Health Interview Survey and the Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey provide detail on cigarette smoking histories that have been statistically analyzed using the age-period-cohort approach to summarize trends in smoking prevalence, initiation and cessation for cohorts beginning around 1890. This has been used to describe the nation, as well as individual states and racial and ethnic subdivisions of the population.
This detail allows for the quantification of the effect that public health measures affecting smoking behavior can have on the health of a population. Current work is also expanding this method to assist in the development of public health efforts in other countries.
