David Savitz

About

Corwin M Zigler is a Professor of Biostatistics at the Brown University School of Public Health and serves as the Director of Biostatistics. His research focuses on quantitative methodology for evaluating the health impacts of environmental and climate-related exposures. His statistical research primarily involves causal inference, with particular emphasis on spatially-indexed data, spatial confounding, interference networks, physical process modeling, and Bayesian methodology. His work integrates statistical methodology, epidemiology, large-scale computation, and atmospheric science to better understand how environmental and climate policies impact human health. Dr. Zigler completed his Ph.D. in Biostatistics at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2010. Prior to his current position at Brown, he served as faculty in the Department of Statistics and Data Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin and in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Health Effects Institute, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He has also served on multiple specialty panels for the U.S. EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. His professional recognitions include being elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2023, receiving the Health Policy Statistics Section Mid-Career Achievement Award in 2019, the Rothman Epidemiology Prize in 2019, and…

Research topics

• Medicine
• Computer Science
• Internal medicine
• Pediatrics
• Intensive care medicine
• Information Retrieval
• Artificial Intelligence
• Environmental health
• Pathology
• Environmental planning

Selected publications

• Can Cross-Sectional Studies Contribute to Causal Inference? It Depends

  American Journal of Epidemiology · 2022 · 284 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Cross-sectional studies-often defined as those in which exposure and outcome are assessed at the same point in time-are frequently viewed as minimally informative for causal inference. While cross-sectional studies may be susceptible to reverse causality, may be limited to assessment of disease prevalence rather than incidence, or may only provide estimates of current rather than past exposures, not all cross-sectional studies suffer these limitations. Moreover, none of these concerns are unique…

  DOI

• Review: Evolution of evidence on PFOA and health following the assessments of the C8 Science Panel

  Environment International · 2020 · 150 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  BACKGROUND: The C8 Science Panel was composed of three epidemiologists charged with studying the possible health effects of PFOA in a highly exposed population in the mid-Ohio Valley. The Panel determined in 2012 there was a 'probable link' (i.e., more probable than not based on the weight of the available scientific evidence) between PFOA and high cholesterol, thyroid disease, kidney and testicular cancer, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and ulcerative colitis. OBJECTIVE: Here, former C8 Scienc…

  DOI

• Assessing the strength of evidence for a causal effect of respiratory syncytial virus lower respiratory tract infections on subsequent wheezing illness: a systematic review and meta-analysis

  The Lancet Respiratory Medicine · 2020 · 109 citations

  BACKGROUND: Although a positive association has been established, it is unclear whether lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs) with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cause chronic wheezing illnesses. If RSV-LRTI were causal, we would expect RSV-LRTI prevention to reduce the incidence of chronic wheezing illnesses in addition to reducing acute disease. We aimed to evaluate the strength of evidence for a causal effect of RSV-LRTI on subsequent chronic wheezing illness to inform public health e…

  DOI

• Responding to Reviewers and Editors About Statistical Significance Testing

  Annals of Internal Medicine · 2024-02-19 · 41 citations

  editorial1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Deployment to Military Bases With Open Burn Pits and Respiratory and Cardiovascular Disease

  JAMA Network Open · 2024-04-25 · 30 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Importance: Many veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq during Operations Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) were deployed to military bases with open burn pits and exposed to their emissions, with limited understanding of the long-term health consequences. Objective: To determine the association between deployment to military bases where open burn pits were used for waste disposal and the subsequent risk of developing respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Design, S…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01ES019955

  NIH · $1.3M · 2015

• NIH Grant R21CA066201

  NIH · $290k · 1998

• Effect Of Iatrogenic Delivery at 34-38 Weeks' Gestation on Pregnancy Outcome

  NIH · $1.8M · 2014–2019

Frequent coauthors

• Erika F. Werner

  Tufts University

  205 shared

• Valery A. Danilack

  Yale University

  187 shared

• Katherine E. Hartmann

  University of Pennsylvania

  186 shared

• Heather S. Lipkind

  Weill Cornell Medicine

  138 shared

• Phinnara Has

  Brown University

  115 shared

• John M. Thorp

  114 shared

• Teresa Janević

  Columbia University

  109 shared

• Edmund F. Funai

  Yale University

  106 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of California at Los Angeles

  2010

• M.A.

  Boston University

  2005

• B.A.

  Boston University

  2005

Awards & honors

• Elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association 2023
• Health Policy Statistics Section Mid-Career Achievement Awar…
• Rothman Epidemiology Prize for the best paper published in E…
• International Society for Bayesian Analysis Mitchell Prize (…

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