1. WELCOME

Welcome to the Department of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Our Department was the first academic department of statistics in the United States, founded in 1918. Its major goal, achieved through education and research, is to enhance and promote effective statistical reasoning and its application in health research and ultimately, to advance the public's health.

Today the Department is chaired by Dr. Scott Zeger and has approximately 18 full-time faculty and 45 students, most of whom are doctoral candidates. Our faculty and students conduct research across the spectrum of statistical science from foundations of inference to the discovery of new methodology to health applications.

The Department offers the PhD,  ScM, and MHS ( Master's of Health Science) in  biostatistics to students earning a PhD in another department of the school and to those health professionals who already have an advanced degree (ie, MD or PhD), as well as an MHS in bioinformatics. We also offer NIH-funded training opportunities in the epidemiology and biostatistics of aging, biostatistics as applied to mental health/psychiatry, environmental biostatistics, and clinical trials.

All faculty and students are required to adhere to the School of Public Health's academic ethics code.

2. MISSION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF BIOSTATISTICS AND SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

The Department has as its mission:

• conduct of original research on important biostatistical problems across the spectrum: foundations º methodology ºapplications;
• responsibility for Johns Hopkins University's PhD and master's programs in biostatistics;
• leadership of biostatistical education for public health/biomedical scientists and professionals at Johns Hopkins;
• participation in other current and future educational programs involving substantial statistical reasoning, such as quantitative genetics, bioinformatics, and clinical investigations;
• facilitation of biomedical and public health research that depends on statistical collaboration or consultation.

2.1. HOPKINS PERSPECTIVE ON BIOSTATISTICS: A BRIEF HISTORY AND TODAY

Biostatistics comprises the reasoning and methods for using data as evidence to address public health and biomedical questions. It is an approach and a set of tools for designing studies and for quantifying the resulting evidence, for quantifying what we believe, and for making decisions.

At Johns Hopkins Department of Biostatistics, research is characterized by a commitment to statistical science, its foundations and methods, as well as the application of statistical science to the solution of public health and biomedical problems. As indicated in the two-way arrows in Figure 1, research on foundations, methods, and applications is mutually supportive. To be excellent, biostatistical research must be built on a foundation of first-rate public health and biomedical research, like that which occurs at Johns Hopkins.

FIGURE 1 goes here.

Research on foundations has as its goal the development of better strategies, or ways of reasoning, for empirical research.  For example, past chair William Cochran demonstrated how observational studies can be used to draw inferences about the causal effect of a treatment on a health outcome.  Jerry Cornfield showed how case control studies can be used to draw valid inferences about parameters in prospective models.  Today, Richard Royall and others are leading a transition in statistical reasoning from decision methods (p-values, tests of hypotheses) toward likelihood methods, which quantify scientific evidence.

Research on statistical methodology has as its goal the creation of new tools for drawing inferences from data.  To illustrate, Ron Brookmeyer and Mitch Gail developed the methodology used to monitor and project the size of the US AIDS epidemic; Kung-Yee Liang, Mei-Cheng Wang, and Scott Zeger developed methods for regression analysis with correlated responses.  Dan Scharfstein and colleagues have developed graphical techniques for assessing the possible impact of missing data in clinical trials and observational studies.  Kung-Yee Liang, Karl Broman, and Giovanni Parmigiani are developing new techniques to find disease genes.  

Biostatistics also includes research on important substantive questions.  For example, Francesca Dominici and colleagues have used multiple national databases to determine the effects of air pollution on mortality across the 90 largest American cities.  Marie Diener-West, Jim Tonascia, Steve Piantadosi, and others have led or collaborated in clinical trials of new therapeutic treatments. 

Throughout its history and today, Hopkins Biostatistics has embraced a broad definition of our discipline, including foundations, methodology, and applications.  The faculty's commitment to this inclusive perspective and the support of the School's administration and faculty are two of the intangible yet critical components of the Department's current and future success.