About

Brian Elbel, PhD, MPH, is a Professor of Health Policy at NYU Wagner and the Muriel G. and George W. Singer Professor of Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He heads the Section on Health Choice, Policy and Evaluation within the Department of Population Health and serves as Associate Dean, Research Mission at NYU Langone Health. His research examines how policies and the environment influence health and health behaviors, with a particular focus on obesity and chronic disease. He employs statistical and econometric methods and utilizes diverse data sources, including administrative, sales, and other data, to understand health outcomes. His work is motivated by a desire to understand how social determinants create disparities in health outcomes and whether policy interventions can reduce these differences.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Demography
• Environmental health
• Internal medicine
• Sociology
• Economics
• Computer Security
• Geography
• Business
• Computer Science
• Demographic economics
• Immunology
• Marketing
• Meteorology
• Endocrinology
• Virology
• Environmental engineering
• Gerontology
• Biology
• Economic growth
• Environmental science

Selected publications

• Longitudinal Analysis of Neighborhood Food Environment and Diabetes Risk in the Veterans Administration Diabetes Risk Cohort

  JAMA Network Open · 2021 · 34 citations

  • Medicine
  • Demography
  • Environmental health

  Importance: Diabetes causes substantial morbidity and mortality among adults in the US, yet its incidence varies across the country, suggesting that neighborhood factors are associated with geographical disparities in diabetes. Objective: To examine the association between neighborhood food environment and risk of incident type 2 diabetes across different community types (high-density urban, low-density urban, suburban, and rural). Design, Setting, and Participants: This is a national cohort study of 4 100 650 US veterans without type 2 diabetes. Participants entered the cohort between 2008 and 2016 and were followed up through 2018. The median (IQR) duration of follow-up was 5.5 (2.6-9.8) person-years. Data were obtained from Veterans Affairs electronic health records. Incident type 2 diabetes was defined as 2 encounters with type 2 diabetes International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision or Tenth Revision codes, a prescription for diabetes medication other than metformin or acarbose alone, or 1 encounter with type 2 diabetes International Classification of Diseases Ninth Revision or Tenth Revision codes and 2 instances of elevated hemoglobin A1c (≥6.5%). Data analysis was performed from October 2020 to March 2021. Exposures: Five-year mean counts of fast-food restaurants and supermarkets relative to other food outlets at baseline were used to generate neighborhood food environment measures. The association between food environment and time to incident diabetes was examined using piecewise exponential models with 2-year interval of person-time and county-level random effects stratifying by community types. Results: The mean (SD) age of cohort participants was 59.4 (17.2) years. Most of the participants were non-Hispanic White (2 783 756 participants [76.3%]) and male (3 779 555 participants [92.2%]). The relative density of fast-food restaurants was positively associated with a modestly increased risk of type 2 diabetes in all community types. The adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) was 1.01 (95% CI, 1.00-1.02) in high-density urban communities, 1.01 (95% CI, 1.01-1.01) in low-density urban communities, 1.02 (95% CI, 1.01-1.03) in suburban communities, and 1.01 (95% CI, 1.01-1.02) in rural communities. The relative density of supermarkets was associated with lower type 2 diabetes risk only in suburban (aHR, 0.97; 95% CI, 0.96-0.99) and rural (aHR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.98-0.99) communities. Conclusions and Relevance: These findings suggest that neighborhood food environment measures are associated with type 2 diabetes among US veterans in multiple community types and that food environments are potential avenues for action to address the burden of diabetes. Tailored interventions targeting the availability of supermarkets may be associated with reduced diabetes risk, particularly in suburban and rural communities, whereas restrictions on fast-food restaurants may help in all community types.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Dominance of Alpha and Iota variants in SARS-CoV-2 vaccine breakthrough infections in New York City

  Journal of Clinical Investigation · 2021 · 54 citations

  • Medicine
  • Biology
  • Virology

  The efficacy of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines is high, but breakthrough infections still occur. We compared the SARS-CoV-2 genomes of 76 breakthrough cases after full vaccination with BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech), mRNA-1273 (Moderna), or JNJ-78436735 (Janssen) to unvaccinated controls (February-April 2021) in metropolitan New York, including their phylogenetic relationship, distribution of variants, and full spike mutation profiles. The median age of patients in the study was 48 years; 7 required hospitalization and 1 died. Most breakthrough infections (57/76) occurred with B.1.1.7 (Alpha) or B.1.526 (Iota). Among the 7 hospitalized cases, 4 were infected with B.1.1.7, including 1 death. Both unmatched and matched statistical analyses considering age, sex, vaccine type, and study month as covariates supported the null hypothesis of equal variant distributions between vaccinated and unvaccinated in χ2 and McNemar tests (P > 0.1), highlighting a high vaccine efficacy against B.1.1.7 and B.1.526. There was no clear association among breakthroughs between type of vaccine received and variant. In the vaccinated group, spike mutations in the N-terminal domain and receptor-binding domain that have been associated with immune evasion were overrepresented. The evolving dynamic of SARS-CoV-2 variants requires broad genomic analyses of breakthrough infections to provide real-life information on immune escape mediated by circulating variants and their spike mutations.

  DOI

• Evaluation of Secondhand Smoke Exposure in New York City Public Housing After Implementation of the 2018 Federal Smoke-Free Housing Policy

  JAMA Network Open · 2020 · 38 citations

  • Environmental health
  • Medicine
  • Business

  Importance: Secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure is associated with many health conditions in children and adults. Millions of individuals in the US are currently exposed to SHS in their homes. Objective: To investigate whether a federal ban on smoking in public housing settings was associated with a decrease in indoor SHS levels in New York City public housing developments 12 months after the policy's implementation. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study tracked indoor air quality longitudinally from April 2018 to September 2019 and used difference-in-differences analysis to examine SHS exposure before vs after implementation of the 2018 federal smoke-free housing (SFH) policy in 10 New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings vs 11 matched low-income buildings not subject to the SFH policy (ie, Section 8 buildings). Exposures: Federal SFH policy implementation, beginning July 30, 2018. Main Outcomes and Measures: Comparison of nicotine concentration levels from passive, bisulfate-coated filters before vs 12 months after implementation of the federal SFH policy. Secondary outcomes included changes in particulate matter less than 2.5 μm in diameter, measured with low-cost particle monitors, and counts of cigarette butts in common areas. Results: Air quality was measured repeatedly in a total of 153 NYCHA and 110 Section 8 nonsmoking households as well as in 91 stairwells and hallways. Before the SFH policy implementation, air nicotine was detectable in 19 of 20 stairwells (95.0%) in NYCHA buildings and 15 of 19 stairwells (78.9%) in Section 8 buildings (P = .19) and in 17 of 19 hallways (89.5%) in NYCHA buildings and 14 of 23 hallways (60.9%) in Section 8 buildings (P = .004). Nicotine was detected less frequently inside nonsmoking apartments overall (26 of 263 [9.9%]) but more frequently in NYCHA apartments (20 of 153 [13.1%]) than in Section 8 apartments (6 of 110 [5.5%]) (P = .04). One year after policy implementation, there was no differential change over time in nicotine concentrations measured in stairwells (DID, 0.03 μg/m3; 95% CI, -0.99 to 1.06 μg/m3) or inside nonsmoking households (DID, -0.04 μg/m3; 95% CI, -0.24 to 0.15 μg/m3). Larger decreases in nicotine concentration were found in NYCHA hallways than in Section 8 hallways (DID, -0.43 μg/m3; 95% CI, -1.26 to 0.40 μg/m3). Conclusions and Relevance: The findings suggest that there was no differential change in SHS in NYCHA buildings 12 months after SFH policy implementation. Additional support may be needed to ensure adherence to SFH policies.

  DOI

• Does proximity to fast food cause childhood obesity? Evidence from public housing

  Regional Science and Urban Economics · 2020 · 38 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Sociology
  • Computer Security
  DOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01DK097347

  NIH · $2.7M · 2018

• NIH Grant R01DK099241

  NIH · $749k · 2014

• NIH Grant R01HL095935

  NIH · $1.7M · 2015

• Impact of the Built Environment on Child Body Mass Index

  NIH · $2.8M · 2016–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Lorna E. Thorpe

  New York University

  44 shared

• Dustin T. Duncan

  Columbia University

  44 shared

• Marie A. Bragg

  New York University

  38 shared

• Pasquale E. Rummo

  New York University

  37 shared

• Amy Ellen Schwartz

  University of Delaware

  36 shared

• Courtney Abrams

  New York University

  34 shared

• Jonathan Cantor

  33 shared

• David C. Lee

  New York University

  30 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Public Health

  University of California, Berkeley

  2000

• Other, Public Health

  University of California, Berkeley

  1996

• B.A., Political Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  1993

Similar researchers at New York University

• Dan R. Littmanh-240
• Jef D. Boekeh-160
• Eliseo Guallarh-151
• Douglas Kondziolkah-144
• Yann LeCunh-144