Progress 04/03/23 to 04/02/24
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We have developed state-of-the-art training in three major domains: a) data analytics, visualization, and management by providing a wide range of options in building technical skills; b) Friedman focal disciplines and themes: healthy food choices, food safety, food quality, and sustainable agriculture by expanding the network of researchers and practitioners for Fellows to access; and c) critical science communication and leadership skills by offering opportunities in developing student-led initiatives, supervising and guiding in reviewing manuscripts for scientific journals, grant writing, and science communications. The most recent development is the design of the first AI in Nutrition Research course, approved in March 2024, that will be piloted this summer.Nutrition and health research rely more on artificial intelligence (AI) models to understand, explain, and predict key outcomes and processes. The emerging AI-based tools provide researchers and practitioners with valuable assistance, yet failure to use these tools in a well-thought-out manner processes can lead to misleading conclusions and concerns surrounding ethics and bias. This course is intended to keep our students informed and better prepared to enter the national workforce.? Course Objectives: To introduce students to the fundamentals of AI and its applications in nutrition research. To provide a strong foundation in creating and using knowledge graphs, conceptual maps, and causal diagrams, To inspire students to apply these knowledge representations to formulate practical research questions, and identify data needs for solving nutrition-related problems. To master students' critical thinking and ethical considerations for responsible use of AI-based tools and assessing their impact on society. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Dissemination of findings has occurred through conference presentations at several events, including the American Society for Nutrition's NUTRITION conference (June 2023) and APHA'22 (November 2023). In preparation for these conference presentations, Fellows have presented their work regularly to students and faculty of research teams, primarily via allocated time slots at the doctoral NEDS seminars. Weprepared and presented talk/posters at the26th AnnualColloquiumon International Engineering EducationDeveloping the Global Engineering Workforce, at theHilton Old Town Alexandria, in Alexandria, Virginia on November 2-3, 2023: 1.Naumova EN, Griffin T. Building Data-savvy Workforce to Drive Innovations in Agriculture, Food, and Health. 2.Naumova EN, Gopal S, Koch M. Interdisciplinary vision, critical thinking, and multicultural approaches in developing global workforce: a case of US-Indonesia partnership. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Suzannah Gerber-Suzannah hopes to submit her doctoral thesis proposal,successfully defend it, begin progress on her thesis aims, publish the two manuscripts currently in review, and submit the additional two in development. To further disseminate our experience and inform other agencies about NNF we plan to participate in a conference focused on international programs (particularly because our team was also funded by the NSF and is connected withIRES/PIRE PIs).University of Rhode Island will be hosting the 27th Annual Colloquium on International Engineering Education on its Kingston Campus November 7 - 8, 2024 (https://web.uri.edu/engineering/academics/iep/aciee2024/). We are particularly interested in exploring topics related to Inclusivity and Bridging the Generational Divide in the Workplace; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Developing the Global Workforce/Sourcing International Internships/Global Student Competitions; and Assessing Intercultural Competence Development. We will also be exploringthe development and adaption of Data Analytics and AI competencies for graduate training at Friedman and involve NNF fellows in this discussion.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
To accomplish the stated goal ofrecruitingthree (3) Ph.D. Fellows in the Targeted Expertise Shortage Area (TESA) of Data Science, we completed the recruiting stage by tapping into the outstanding pool of applicants in all programs of FSNSP. Our first fellow, Ryan Simpson, MS, PhD,completed his doctoralprogram on June 17, 2023, and is now working as a Healthcare Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR) Associate at Analysis Group, Inc. while also serving as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School. Our second fellow, Breanne Langlois, MS, PhD defended her dissertation on July 26, 2023. Our third fellow, Suzannah Gerber, MA, is in her last year and continues her training. The section below provides a brief description of their activities for the period 04/03/2023 - 04/02/2024 (or Year 2 and Year 3), respectively. Breanne Langlois- As a NIFA fellow in the division of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science, Breanne Langlois conducted research in the areas of climate change vulnerability, methodological approaches and development, interdisciplinary spatial and epidemiological data linkages, and climate-related impacts on agriculture and food and nutrition security. The experience of being an NNF fellow helped her to shape educational goals, identify the scope of doctoral research, and develop specific aims through partnerships. In her own words: "I received valuable guidance and feedback from Indonesian advisors throughout my dissertation work, which helped me understand the context, refine analyses, and interpret findings... It helped me narrow my broad interests into specific goals and identify where my skills and expertise could be most valuable. I gained leadership, project management, presentation, and science communication experience which I carry forward in my career." Even after graduating, Breanne continues to stay connected with IRES partners from the US and Indonesia through her professional network. Her key accomplishments include the completion of her doctoral dissertation and securing a position as ORISE Nutrition Science Fellow at the USDA Ryan Simpson -As a NIFA fellow he continues to participate in teaching and advising activities for graduate students. He was co-teaching the Data Visualization course in Spring 2023 and the Advanced Data Analysis course in Fall 2023 in his capacity as an Adjunct Lecturer in the Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science department at the Tufts Friedman School. As his courses teach students about research methods and data analytics to lead to publication by the end of the semester, the NIFA fellowship provided him with numerous opportunities to grow professionally and refine his skills in teaching and engaging with students. He continues publishing work stemming from his dissertation and helping his students to present their first work. Suzannah Gerber- As a NIFA fellow in the division of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science, Suzannah Gerber is conducting research on a variety of projects related to nutrition, dietary patterns, health, and behavior science. Suzannah completed all required coursework in Summer 2022; and is expected to pass her Qualifying Examination in Spring, 2024. She is actively working on developing dissertation components. Suzannah continued her research in multiple Tufts labs: 1) the Mozaffarian research lab where she is now leading the manuscript development that followed the consumer behavior research, stemming from the prior reporting period focusing onChanges in food security, healthfulness, and access during the COVID-19 pandemic-results from a national U.S. survey; 2) the Nutrition Epidemiology lab (NEPI) of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Resource Center on Aging (HNRCA), where she is developing novel metrics to analyze adherence and compliance to special dietary patterns, and conducted a three-level validation study for this novel metric; she is working on a manuscript stemming for her presentation. 3) The Energy Metabolism lab (EMET) of the HNRCA where she is leading the four-person intervention team, gathering qualitative and quantitative data relevant to health behavior change, monitoring participant progress, leading educational programs, and preparing to analyze biological specimens related to dietary adherence markers. Suzannah is contributingto this study by reformulating the process and preparing a manuscript submitted toNutrients(currently in revision). In the reported year, Suzannah joined a project on cellular agriculture (https://cellularagriculture.tufts.edu/) led by Dr. Cash (Friedman component) that is likely to form the key focus of the dissertation; she is helping to refine online survey, reviewing literature, and preparing a manuscript for Nature Communications. Her current focus is on drafting the first provisional LOI.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Langlois BK, Marsh E, Stotland T, Simpson RB, Berry K, Carroll DA, Ismanto A, Koch M, Naumova EN. Usability of existing global and national data for flood related vulnerability assessment in Indonesia. Science of the Total Environment. 2023; 873, 162315. (online) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969723009312
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Langlois BK, Beaulac L, Berry K, Anyanwu O, Simpson RB, Ismanto A, Koch M, Coughlan de Perez E, Griffin T, Naumova EN. Household flood severity and migration extent in Central Java: analysis of the Indonesian Family Life Survey. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2023; 20(8), 5706. https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/9/5706 (online May 2, 2023)
- Type:
Book Chapters
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Simpson RB, Gottleib J, Liang S, Zhou B, Hartwick MA, Naumova EN. Navigating global influenza surveillance systems for building reliable forecast. In: Integrated Science of Global Epidemics. Editor-in-Chief: Rezaei, N. ISSN: 2662-9461 Springer. 2023; pp. 111-137 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-17778-1_6
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Langlois BK, Magnuson A, Griffin T, Coughlan Perez E, Naumova EN, Koch M. Usability of flood data portals for food security, nutrition, and health research. PLoS Climate. 2024. (submitted Dec 14, 2023 in review)
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Langlois BK, Koch M, Ismanto A, Alfirdaus L, Beaulac L, Berry K, Griffin T, Coughlan de Perez E, Naumova EN. Recurrent flooding and household food access in Central Java, Indonesia. The Lancet Planetary Health. (submitted Sep 21, 2023 in review)
|
Progress 04/03/22 to 04/02/23
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?To accomplish the stated goal of training the recruited candidates, we ensure that all Fellows complete their training plan, successfully pass the qualifying examinations, actively pursue opportunities for small grant funding, presentation of preliminary results at national and international conferences, initiate and lead university-wide and school-wide activities to develop strong leadership skills. We have developed state-of-the-art training in three major domains: a) data analytics, visualization, and management by providing a wide range of options in building technical skills; b) Friedman focal disciplines and themes: healthy food choices, food safety, food quality, and sustainable agriculture by expanding the network of researchers and practitioners for Fellows to access; and c) critical science communication and leadership skills by offering opportunities in developing student-led initiatives, supervising and guiding in reviewing manuscripts for scientific journals, grant writing, and science communications. Fellows have received training in nutritional epidemiology, advanced statistics, geospatial analyses, remote sensing, and grant writing. Technical skill development has included familiarity with a range of statistical programming software, which has been taught on various occasions to peers at the Friedman School, and literature review management software. The program has allowed fellows to collaborate with an interdisciplinary team within Tufts University and at other institutions abroad including presentations at international conferences with diverse audiences. Team-based research has provided skills in project coordination, conducting research as a primary investigator, and reviewing peers' publications both informally and formally as Academic Journal Reviewers. Fellows have received professional development opportunities by co-organizing and hosting the Tufts Research and Data Symposium for Food and Nutrition in March of 2023. The conference aims were inspired by the major goals of the NIFA grant and included: i) promoting transdisciplinary research in nutrition and public health, ii) aiding students to engage in professional networking beyond institutional and generational boundaries, and iii) encouraging diverse and inclusive collaboration on intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and multicultural scientific research teams. Breanne and Suzannah served on the conference planning committee to organize a series of keynote addresses, panel discussions, technical workshops, and student research presentations aimed to provide public communication and data science skills, discuss emerging nutrition topics, and practice scientific communication to diverse general and technical audiences. The total conference attendees included over 1000 students, researchers, faculty, and working professionals from 200+ academic universities, 200+ professional organizations, 50+ countries, and 42 of 50 US states. From January 2022 to December 2022, Breanne mentored and led a team of Tufts University students (Sustainable Water Management masters students Leah Beaulac and Katherine Berry, and an undergraduate student in Community Health, Aliya Magnuson) to assist with Aim 1 of her research. For Leah Beaulac, Breanne supervised a directed study focused on research skills applied to the Sustainable Adaptation of Coastal Areas to Environmental Change in Indonesia (IRES project). During this directed study, the student conducted a detailed literature review of flooding and food security, learned Stata programming, conducted a statistical analysis of the Indonesian Family Life Survey, prepared an abstract and poster presentation, and assisted with a draft of a manuscript that is currently under review. Breanne also advised Katherine Berry on revising and completing prior work comparing climate change resilience planning in Boston, USA, and Semarang, Indonesia. Katherine also assisted with a comprehensive review of flood monitoring data products. During the Summer, Katherine organized an in-person working retreat to visit "Little Indonesia" in Somersworth, NH. During the retreat, Breanne and Elena Naumova advised the final project presentation for the Sustainable Water Management program. For each of the flood monitoring portals, the students helped gather detailed information aboutaccessibility, availability, data sources, formats, alignment, volume, velocity, variety, and completeness.In addition to these attributes, Breanne recognized the need to evaluate these data portals from an external user perspective. She developed a web-based survey, obtained IRB approval, and recruited graduate students to rate each of the portals based on the following evaluation criteria:goals and scope, data quality, visualization quality, platform accessibility, contacts, communication, and conflicts of interest. Findings provided clear recommendations for how to improve the usability of these important data sources, which Breanne is currently writing in a manuscript to be submitted to Nature Data. Breanne also identified a high-resolution, raster data product developed from millions of Landsat satellite images. This data product captures changes in the Earth's surface water since 1984. The next step was to link these data to the Indonesian Family Life Survey, creating an interdisciplinary dataset to use for statistical modeling. Breanne created a more efficient method using R statistical programming to mask and crop the raster file using district-level administrative boundaries and extract summary statistics of the raster cell values by the district. This method will be presented in a technical workshop at the2023 Tufts Nutrition and Data Symposium(TNDS), which Breanne is co-chairing with Suzannah Gerber. Suzannah has mentored four masters-level students in this period, one covering research methods, and analyzing clinical data, and led to the submission of an abstract for the Society of Behavioral Medicine annual meeting; one on recruitment methods for ongoing research at the HRNCA; and the other two on intervention methods for the same ongoing research at the HNRCA. Additionally, in her career talks for clinical nutrition, she has met with several master's students to help advise about career objectives and to pursue additional credentialing outside of Tufts. Suzannah was invited to be a writer for the Tufts Health and Nutrition Letter, the only student to contribute articles to this ongoing Tufts communication. To date, Suzannah has written three articles and contributed additional materials to many issues published in 2022. Suzannah had three abstracts accepted to the Society of Behavioral Medicine 2023 and is presenting at the upcoming annual meeting. Additionally, Suzannah applied for a grant to the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) to support work in the NEPI lab mentioned above, which she was awarded in November 2022. She intends to submit two first-author abstracts to the American Society of Nutrition 2023 annual meeting. In this reporting period, Suzannah has predominantly focused on preparation for her Qualifying Exams and will then next focus on submitting her Letter of Intent (LOI), followed by preparing, submitting, and defending her Thesis Proposal. In addition to her work in these labs, Suzannah is a co-chair of the Tufts Nutrition and Data Symposium (TNDS) and led a session on Natural Language Processing and sentiment analysis. She was also invited back to speak at Harvard Medical School about her research, gave a talk about clinical nutrition careers with the Block Career Center, gave a guest lecture on Data Management at the Tufts School of Public Health, and gave two invited lectures on the use of Social Media for Research (one at FSNSP and one for the Society of Behavioral Medicine). She remains a leader of the Evidence-Based Behavioral Medicine SIG of the Society for Behavioral Medicine. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Dissemination of findings has occurred through conference presentations at several events, including the American Society for Nutrition's NUTRITION conference (June 2022), APHA'22 (November 2022), and INC in Japan (December 2022). In preparation for these conference presentations, Fellows have presented their work regularly to students and faculty of research teams, primarily via allocated time slots at the doctoral NEDS seminars. Findings have been disseminated through the publication of manuscripts in academic journals [see references below]. PIs prepared and presented a brief talk, entitled "NNF at Friedman: building a cadre of data-savvy professionals in graduate programs of Nutrition Science and Policy" at the USDA NIFA National Needs Fellowship Project Director's meeting on Jan 25, 2023; and completed the follow-up surveys. There are several publications in preparation: Publications currently in preparation: 1.Langlois BK, Koch M, Ismanto A, Beaulac L, Berry K, Griffin T, Coughlan de Perez E, Naumova EN. Comparison of usability aspects of flood monitoring data portals for health and nutrition research. Preparing for Nature Scientific Data. 2.Langlois BK, Berry K, Beaulac L, Ismanto A, Koch M, Griffin T, Coughlan de Perez E, Naumova EN. Dynamic mapping of flood events in Central Java, Indonesia (1988-2021). 3.Langlois BK, Ismanto A, Beaulac L, Berry K, Beaulac L, Koch M, Griffin T, Coughlan de Perez E, Naumova EN. Spatial and survey data linkages to study effects of climate on health and nutrition outcomes. 4.Langlois BK, Ismanto A, Alfirdaus LK, Beaulac L, Berry K, Beaulac L, Koch M, Griffin T, Coughlan de Perez E, Naumova EN. Recurrent flooding and household food access in Central Java, Indonesia 5.Gerber S, Silver R, Dao MC, Morcos TL, Ramirez I, Das SK, Roberts SB. Development of the eHealth-Adapted Version of the Diabetes Prevention Program for Older Adults: the BB-Health Study. Preparing for DiabetesCare. 6.Gerber S., Rogers G, Livingstone K, Jacques P, Naumova EN, Karlsen K, Economos C, McKeown N. Adherence and Diet Quality Among Popular Diet Followers. Preparing for International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Breanne Langlois -Breanne will complete her dissertation research and plans to graduate in the Summerof 2023. After graduation, Breanne plans to work as a scientist in a research-intensive institution while maintaining ties with a university through mentoring and teaching. Suzannah Gerber- Suzannah hopes to publish the two manuscripts currently in review and to submit the additional two in development. She also hopes to submit her doctoral thesis proposal, successfully defend it, and begin progress on her thesis aims. To further disseminate our experience and inform other agencies about NNF we plan to participate in a conference focused on international programs (particularly because our team was also funded by the NSF and is connected withIRES/PIRE PIs).Virginia Tech is hosting the26th AnnualColloquiumon International Engineering Educationat theHilton Old Town Alexandria, in Alexandria, Virginia on November 2-3, 2023.This year's conference theme isDeveloping the Global Engineering Workforce to provide educators and researchers, international program administrators, industry leaders, public sector representatives, and students common ground to talk about higher education for today's global workplace. Although this conference is generally focused on engineering fields, many of the lessons and experiences could be translated to broader STEM contexts. We anticipate that our focus on data-intensive disciplines for the NNF program would provide valuable contributions and generate interest in our program.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
To accomplish the stated goal ofrecruitingthree (3) Ph.D. Fellows in the Targeted Expertise Shortage Area (TESA) of Data Science, we completed the recruiting stage by tapping into the outstanding pool of applicants in all programs of FSNSP. Our first fellow, Ryan Simpson, MS, Ph.D. completed his Ph.D. program on June 17, 2023, and is now working as a Healthcare Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR) Associate at Analysis Group, Inc. while also serving as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School. Our two current fellows are Breanne Langlois, MS, and Suzannah Gerber, MA. The section below provides a brief description of their activities for the period 4/03/2022 - 04/02/2023 (or Year 1 and Year 2), respectively. Breanne Langlois -As a NIFA fellow in the division of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science, Breanne Langlois is conducting research in the areas of climate change vulnerability, methodological approaches and development, interdisciplinary spatial and epidemiological data linkages, and climate-related impacts on agriculture and food and nutrition security.Breanne's prior work with the Tufts Institute of the Environment linking global and national data to explore flood-related vulnerability has been completed, with a manuscript recently accepted for publication inScience of the Total Environment.This paper highlights the underutilization and opportunity of free, public data sources for vulnerability assessment. Breanne has also completed a study examining household flood severity and migration extent in Central Java. This study identified that vulnerable, severely affected households might be staying within flood-affected areas compared to those that are less severely impacted by floods. This manuscript is currently under review at theInternational Journal ofEnvironmental Research and Public Health.During this reporting period, Breanne has made significant progress with her doctoral dissertation research titled "Recurring flooding and household food access in Central Java, Indonesia". The aims of her research are to:1. Compare the pros and cons of different flood monitoring data portals in terms of their applicability to the current study.This aim explores and describes the usability characteristics of the following data portals and identifies a data product to merge with the Indonesian Family Life Survey to measure recurring flooding: Global Flood Monitoring System, Global Surface Water Explorer, JRC's Global Flood Awareness System, MODIS NRT Global Flood Product, NASA Worldview, Global Agricultural & Disaster Assessment System, and Dartmouth Flood Observatory (DFO).2. Evaluate how recurring flooding has impacted household access to sufficient quantities of foodusing household food expenditure share as the outcome, constructed from the household food purchase and consumption data module.3. Evaluate how recurring flooding has impacted household access to adequate nutritionusing household food purchase and consumption data and household diet quality. Breanne presented her research at national and international conferences during this reporting period. She advised and led students in statistical analysis and abstract and poster preparation viaa directed study where students learned Stata programming, conducted the statistical analysis, and presented their work at professional conferences. In April 2022, under Breanne's guidance, students presented a virtual poster titled "Placing health and economic survey data into a climate change vulnerability framework in Indonesia: exploring factors related to severe impacts from disasters in the Indonesian Family Life Survey" at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) conference. In June 2022, at the American Society of Nutrition's annual conference, they presented another virtual poster titled "Natural Disaster and Migration Trends in Flood Prone Agricultural Areas of Central Java, Indonesia" developed with Breanne's guidance. Breanne did an oral presentation titled "Usability of the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) to Examine Recurrent Flooding and Household Food Access in Central Java, Indonesia". In December 2022, all three studentsattended the 22ndInternational Congress of Nutrition in Tokyo, Japan, andpresented two posters:"Evaluation criteria for flood monitoring portals: how to assess data quality and usability for nutrition and public health research?" and "Recurrent flooding and household diet quantity in Central Java, Indonesia 1988-2015." Suzannah Gerber-As a NIFA fellow in the division of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science, Suzannah Gerber is conducting research on a variety of projects related to nutrition, dietary patterns, health, and behavior science. Suzannah successfully completed all required coursework in the Summer of 2022 and is expected to pass her Qualifying Examination in Spring, 2023. Suzannah had her first, first-author manuscript published and has another two first-author manuscripts under review, and two more in development. One of the two manuscripts under review is relevant to work which was awarded the "Emerging Leaders in Nutrition Science" award at the American Society of Nutrition conference in June 2022. Suzannah continued her research in several Tufts labs:1) the Mozaffarian research lab where she is now leading the manuscript development that followed from the consumer behavior research, she led in the prior reporting period;2) the Nutrition Epidemiology lab (NEPI) of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Resource Center on Aging (HNRCA), where she is developing novel metrics to analyze adherence and compliance to special dietary patterns, and conducted a three-level validation study for this novel metric;3) The Energy Metabolism lab (EMET) of the HNRCA where she is leading the four-person intervention team, gathering qualitative and quantitative data relevant to health behavior change, monitoring participant progress, leading educational programs, and preparing to analyze biological specimens related to dietary adherence markers. Ryan Simpson -As a NIFA fellow in the division of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science, Ryan Simpson conducted and coordinated research on a variety of projects related to nutrition, health, and the environment until his defense on June 17, 2022. His dissertation, entitled"Data quality metrics and time series methods for health surveillance", aimed to create an assembly of data quality metrics and time series methods to describe, explain, and predict foodborne and waterborne illnesses and outbreaks using time-referenced, publicly available surveillance data. His works further demonstrated how these methods and approaches could be used to examine non-seasonal epidemic or pandemic outbreaks such as cholera in Yemen and SARS-CoV-2 in the United States. Upon successfully completing his doctorate, Ryan began working as a HEOR Associate consultant at Analysis Group, Inc. in Boston, MA as well as teaching as an Adjunct Lecturer in the Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science department at the Tufts Friedman School. At Analysis Group, Ryan is involved in collaborating with pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical clients to develop and implement strategies to support cutting-edge emerging technologies and products throughout their life cycles. This often includes direct and indirect comparisons of clinical trials or real-world therapies, where he leverages his doctorate experience in leveraging surveillance system data, managing big datasets, and addressing challenges of missing data to address statistical challenges he faces. Furthermore, his experience as a researcher and published author while serving as a NIFA fellow circulated his works to a broad audience of industry professionals, ultimately leading to the securement of his current employment and that of other Tufts Friedman students.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
1. Langlois BK, Marsh E, Stotland T, Simpson RB, Berry K, Carroll DA, Ismanto A, Koch M, Naumova EN. Usability of existing global and national data for flood-related vulnerability assessment in Indonesia. Science of the Total Environment. 2023; 873, 162315. (online) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969723009312
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
1. Langlois BK, Beaulac L, Berry K, Anyanwu O, Simpson RB, Ismanto A, Koch M, Coughlan de Perez E, Griffin T, Naumova EN. Household flood severity and migration extent in Central Java: analysis of the Indonesian Family Life Survey. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2023; (submitted Dec 31, 2022 in review)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
1. Langlois BK, Beaulac L, Berry K, Messeroux T, Simpson RB, Lan J, Coughlan de Perez E, Naumova EN (2022). Placing health and economic survey data into a climate change vulnerability framework in Indonesia: exploring factors related to severe impacts from disasters in the Indonesian Family Life Survey. 2022 Annual CUGH Global Health Conference. Consortium of Universities for Global Health. March 28 - April 1, 2022. Poster Presentation.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
2. Langlois BK, Anyanwu O, Beaulac L, Berry K, Magnuson A, Ismanto A, Griffin T, Coughlan de Perez E, Koch M, Naumova EN (2022). Usability of the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) To Examine Recurrent Flooding and Household Food Access in Central Java, Indonesia. American Society of Nutrition. Nutrition 2022 Live Online. June 14 16, 2022. Oral Presentation.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
3. Langlois BK, Beaulac L, Berry K, Griffin T, Coughlan de Perez E, Koch M, Naumova EN (2022). Evaluation criteria for flood monitoring portals: how to assess data quality and usability for nutrition and public health research? International Congress of Nutrition. 22nd IUNS-ICN in Tokyo, Japan. December 6- 11, 2022. Poster Presentation.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
4. Langlois BK, Beaulac L, Berry K, Griffin T, Coughlan de Perez E, Koch M, Naumova EN (2022). Recurrent flooding and household diet quantity in Central Java, Indonesia 1988-2015. International Congress of Nutrition. 22nd IUNS-ICN in Tokyo, Japan. December 6- 11, 2022. Poster Presentation.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
5. Beaulac L, Langlois BK, Berry K, Naumova EN (2022). Natural Disaster and Migration Trends in Flood Prone Agricultural Areas of Indonesia. American Society of Nutrition. Nutrition 2022 Live Online. June 14 June 16, 2022. Poster Presentation.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
6. Langlois BK, Griffin T, Coughlan de Perez E, Koch M, Naumova EN. Recurrent flooding and household food access in Central Java, Indonesia in 1984-2015. To be presented at the ASN Nutrition23, Boston, MA. July 22-25, 2023 (submitted Mar 1, 2023)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
7. Langlois BK, Coughlan de Perez E, Koch M, Griffin T, Naumova EN. Linkage of Global Surface Water Explorer dataset to a longitudinal household survey for integrative statistical analysis. To be presented at the TIES conference. July 2023, Canada (submitted Mar 17, 2023)
|
Progress 04/03/21 to 04/02/22
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience(s) reached by our efforts included graduate students, faculty, staff of Tufts University, as well as over 1000 participants of the Tufts Nutrition Data Science conference we had organized this year. We focused on both scientists and practitioners investigating healthy food choices, food safety and quality, and sustainable agriculture. As nutrition datasets become increasingly complex, researchers from a broad range of disciplines will need advanced analytical skills to link, manage, map, analyze, interpret, and display data, as well as to communicate their findings to diverse audiences. We are creating innovative experiences in classroom settings and exploring solutions to complex issues that require team science. We are focusing on building experience in working in interdisciplinary multicultural multigenerational settings to train experts who are able to harmonize, analyze, interpret, and act upon data derived from multiple sources, disciplines, and agencies. We emphasize three major domains: a) data analytics, visualization, and management, b) healthy food choices, food safety, climate effects onsustainable agriculture, and c) critical science communication and leadership skills. We actively capitalize on the recently developed and successfully applied NSF-funded SOLSTICE approach and ongoing school-led and student-led initiatives to hone critical thinking with the emphasis on the ethical aspects of data sharing. These directions arelinked to two USDA-NIFA Challenge Areas in advancingthe nation's ability to achieve global food securityandthe development and delivery of science for ecosystems adapted to climate variability and to mitigate climate impacts. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?To accomplish the stated goal oftraining the recruited candidates, we ensure that all Fellows complete their training plan, successfully passed the qualifying examinations, actively pursue opportunities for small grant funding, presentation of preliminary results at the national and international conferences, initiate and lead university-wide and school-wide activities to develop strong leadership skills. We have developed the state-of-the-art training in three major domains: a) data analytics, visualization, and management by providing a wide range of options in building technical skills; b) Friedman focal disciplines and themes: healthy food choices, food safety, food quality, and sustainable agriculture by expanding the network of researchers and practitioners for Fellows to access; and c) critical science communication and leadership skills by offering opportunities in developing student-led initiatives, supervising and guiding in reviewing manuscripts for scientific journals, grant writing, and science communications. Fellows have received training in nutritional epidemiology, advanced statistics, geospatial analyses, remote sensing, and grant writing. Technical skill development has included familiarity with a range of statistical programming software, which has been taught on various occasions to peers at the Friedman School, and literature review management software. The program has allowed fellows to collaborate with an interdisciplinary team within Tufts University and at other institutions abroad including presentations at international conferences with diverse audiences. Team-based research has provided skills in project coordination, conducting research as a primary investigator, and reviewing peers' publications both informally and formally as Academic Journal Reviewers. In Fall 2020, we had initiated the new Doctoral Seminar course at the NEDS program and offered it to the Fellows and 12 other doctoral students. This seminar is co-designed with doctoral students to address students' pressing needs and aspiration goals, practice presentations, and offer constructive feedback to peers. In Spring and Fall of 2021, all Fellows actively participated in the Doctoral Seminar: in December 2021, Suzannah moderated a panel discussion and invited a doctoral student and a faculty member to participate as discussants; Brianne Langlois presented her doctoral proposal and responded to group feedback, Ryan Simpson shared his experience in preparing Letter of Intent and the dissertation outline. Fellows have received professional development opportunities by co-organizing and hosting the Tufts Research and Data Symposium for Food and Nutrition in March of 2022. The conference aims were inspired by the major goals of the NIFA grant and included: i) promoting transdisciplinary research in nutrition and public health, ii) aiding students to engage in professional networking beyond institutional and generational boundaries, and iii) encouraging diverse and inclusive collaboration on intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and multicultural scientific research teams. Ryan, Breanne, and Suzannah served on the conference planning committee to organize a series of keynote addresses, panel discussions, technical workshops, and student research presentations aimed to provide data science skills, discuss emerging nutrition topics, and practice scientific communication to diverse general and technical audiences. The total conference attendees included ~1100 students, researchers, faculty, and working professionals from 200+ academic universities, 300+ professional organizations, 70+ countries, and 45 of 50 US states. In addition to technical training and conference-based professional development, Ryan gained experience assisting in teaching for graduate courses including introductory biostatistics, intermediate biostatistics, advanced data analysis, and data visualizations and communications. With biostatistics courses, Ryan served as a Residency Teaching Assistant to train public health professionals in biostatistics principles including data cleaning, data management, statistical modeling, modeling diagnostics, and basic data visualizations. Advanced courses in data analytics and visualizations provided Ryan with the opportunity to serve as a research coordinator and help guide students through the research process from data extraction and research hypothesis formulation to manuscript drafting, editing, and submission. Ryan has also mentored ~15 undergraduate and graduate students on various projects related to food safety, foodborne illnesses, the environment, and the intersection between these topic areas. During the reporting period, Breanne has trained undergraduate and Masters students in data management, manipulations, and statistical programming using R and Stata packages. She has mentored and supervised 2 Masters students in basic statistical analysis and regression modeling, which culminated in analyses examining climate-related disasters and economic impacts of agricultural and fishing households. In addition, this led to a directed study of one of the masters' students related to statistical analysis learning applied to food security, adaptation, and mitigation strategies in disaster-prone contexts. Breanne is currently guiding this directed study. Suzannah attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate for COP26 as a Tufts Delegate in collaboration with the Tufts Institute for the Environment. While in Glasgow, she presented research at the Nourish Scotland group, was invited to attend the Climate Action Solution Center high-level workshop on alternative proteins, and participated in roundtables hosted by the YOUNGO initiative FOOD@COP. Additionally, in preparation for her abstract presentation at the Society of Behavioral Medicine Annual Meeting, she is developing an explainer video to accompany her recent research on identity-based and culturally sensitive approaches for eating behavior. Pursuant to this objective, she applied for the Bridging Differences Grant, a Tufts campus-wide initiative that aims at increasing interdisciplinary approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion. During the fall of 2021, Suzannah also attended the Cochrane Training Session on conducting systematic reviews. She also completed the certification process to become a dietary intervention leader from the Diabetes Prevention Program and now directs a weekly workshop mentoring students in data programming. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Dissemination of findings has occurred through virtual conference presentations at the American Society for Nutrition's NUTRITION conference (June 2021), Epidemics'8 (December 2021), and the Consortium of Universities for Global Health's conference (March 2022). In preparation for these conference presentations, Fellows have presented their work regularly to students and faculty of research teams. Presentations have also occurred beyond research groups to faculty at the Friedman School and a diverse body of graduate students from different schools within Tufts University through collaboration with Tufts Institute of the Environment and Tufts Data Intensive Science Center. Findings have been disseminated through the publication of manuscripts at academic journals such as Nature Scientific Reports, Nature Data, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, the Journal of Public Health Policy, and Epidemiology and Infection [see 4 cited publications]. In building team science skills, we encourage Fellow to develop professional networks and contribute to the work of other research teams capitalizing on their ownstrengths[see 41 cited references, marked as supporting authors]. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Breanne Langlois Breanne is currently conducting her dissertation research and writing 5 related manuscripts. During this reporting period, she will conduct research activities related to her doctoral dissertation. She will review and compare, in-depth, usability and data quality aspects of 7 flood monitoring data portals: Global Flood Monitoring System, Global Surface Water Explorer, JRC's Global Flood Awareness System, MODIS NRT Global Flood Product, NASA Worldview, Global Agricultural & Disaster Assessment System, and Dartmouth Flood Observatory. This will include a detailed description of data accessibility, availability, sources, and formats for researchers. She will identify evaluation criteria for assessing the data quality and usability of these portals for nutrition and public health research and conduct an 'external user' assessment. She will create a dynamic map to visualize the spatiotemporal distribution of floods across Central Java, 1988-2022. After reviewing flood data, Breanne will create a dataset to study the impacts of recurrent floods on household-level food security outcomes by linking flood monitoring data to health and economic survey data. Part of this work will include the creation of variables to measure household exposure to floods across space and time. Through this work, she will contribute to the scientific community a definition of the flood that can be used for statistical analysis. She will conduct statistical modeling using household food purchase and consumption data and indicators constructed using the Data4Diets framework to measure household diet quantity and diet quality. She will assess both linear and nonlinear relationships between recurrent floods and food quantity outcomes, examining the form and shape of the relationship in depth. Breanne plans to write 5 manuscripts based on her work. In addition, she is the lead author on 5 conference presentations, abstracts of which have already been submitted to national and international conferences. Her papers and abstract presentations include data usability and quality, flood and survey data linkages, dynamic mapping, and analysis of the impact of recurrent floods on household food security. Suzannah Gerber Suzannah is hopeful that her Identity-based project receives grant funding which would enable her to conduct workshops on the topic and distribute her research and accompanying video to larger audiences. She looks forward to being a first-time attendee of ASN and AAEA while presenting her abstracts. Suzannah will complete all required coursework by the end of summer 2022 and move through major doctoral milestones of Qualifying exams, writing her letter of intent, and then assembling a strong and supportive committee able to enhance her use of quantitative skills, and inter-disciplinary approach to translational skills. She also aims to have 3 first-author papers submitted by the end of 2022, and another early in 2023. Ryan Simpson Ryan is currently working to complete his dissertation with an anticipated Thesis Proposal Defense in late-June 2022. His dissertation focuses on the importance of data quality metrics and time series methods for describing, explaining, and predicting foodborne and waterborne infections and seasonal outbreaks. He also emphasizes the importance of the relationship between the quality of data curation and data modeling and the role that both play in ensuring the credibility and longevity of disease surveillance data. These aspects of his doctoral works are likely to result in solid manuscripts for highly reputable journals. For the final chapters of this dissertation, he will: i) propose metrics for assessing the quality of surveillance time series data; ii) describe the relationship between data quality, country latitude, and country health expenditure per capita; and iii) explain the relationship between country data quality, latitude, and disease seasonality for select influenza strains and subtypes.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
To accomplish the stated goal ofrecruitingthree (3) Ph.D. Fellows in the Targeted Expertise Shortage Area (TESA) of Data Science, we completed the recruiting stage by tapping on the outstanding pool of applicants in all programs of FSNSP. In September 2021, Suzannah Gerber, MS has joined Breanne Langlois, MS, and Ryan Simpson, MS. The section below provides a brief description of their activities for Year 1 and Year 2, respectively. Breanne Langlois As a NIFA fellow in the division of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science, Breanne Langlois is conducting research into the climate-related impacts on food and nutrition security. During this reporting period, Breanne has successfully completed 3 doctoral milestones. She passed the qualifying examination (May 2021), assembled her dissertation committee, and received approval to move forward with her research (September 2021). From September 2021 to January 2022, Breanne conducted a systematic literature review of Agriculture & Environmental Science database, Web of Science, and PubMed and wrote and defended her doctoral thesis proposal. She is currently working on her research, examining recurrent flooding and diet-related food security in Central Java, Indonesia. Specifically, she is examining how recurring flooding has impacted household access to sufficient quantities of food and adequate nutrition. As part of this research, she is investigating the usability of several flood monitoring data portals for public health and nutrition research purposes, including the development of metrics for an 'external user' assessment of these portals. She is also demonstrating how these flood data can be linked to surveys to study the impacts on nutrition and health outcomes. Using data from a selected flood monitoring portal, she is also building a dynamic mapping to visualize the spatiotemporal distribution simultaneously. Breanne's dissertation research builds off her previous year's work with Tufts Institute of the Environment which was successfully completed during this reporting period. This work culminated in a final written report to TIE, "Climate-related vulnerability mapping in Central Java, Indonesia: an examination of flooding and its impacts", and a manuscript, "Flood monitoring and disaster data linkages: applications for vulnerability mapping and assessment in Indonesia", which will be published in a special issue in the International Journal Environmental Research and Public Health. Breanne has received extensive training related to data usability and quality, data visualization, and non-linear modeling. She is developing expertise in the usability of climate data for nutrition and public health research purposes. Breanne has supervised Tufts University masters and undergraduate students on work related to an ongoing NSF-funded project establishing international training in environmental sustainability. In addition to mentoring and training these students, Breanne has been involved in other teaching activities at the Friedman School. She has led a doctoral seminar, co-taught a session on study design and analytic approach in a grant writing course for doctoral students led by Dr. Economos, and has taught sampling and sample size calculation in Dr. Rogers' Survey Research methods course. Breanne has submitted abstracts for presentation to 4 upcoming scientific conferences: Consortium of Universities for Global Health, the American Society for Nutrition, the Agriculture, Nutrition & Health Academy, and the International Congress of Nutrition. Ryan Simpson As a NIFA fellow in the division of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science, Ryan Simpson has both conducted and coordinated research on a variety of projects related to nutrition, health, and the environment. Ryan has prioritized the drafting and submission of manuscripts related to his dissertation and the Naumova Labs research team. The theme of these works has centered on techniques for assessing publicly reported surveillance data quality, analytic methods for examining disease outbreak severity, and techniques for modeling signatures of emerging outbreak threats. All works also align with a literature review on time series methods for detecting seasonality and estimating its features or expand upon this review to propose techniques for real-time surveillance of outbreak signatures. In all, these works have culminated in 9 published manuscripts (5 as lead author), 2 submitted manuscripts (1 as lead author), and 5 manuscripts in preparation (4 as lead author). The combination of these works speaks to the gradual wrapping up of his dissertation as well as the works of multi-year, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary research teams. In addition, Ryan has prioritized depth over breadth in knowledge. In particular, he has deepened his understanding of data quality, seasonality, and techniques for real-time outbreak surveillance. His work on data quality metrics has helped him understand the challenges of designing longitudinal surveillance systems where curated data are usable for modeling purposes. His work on describing the modeling of seasons and estimating seasonality features introduced a new perspective on how to perform time series analyses. This includes refining his understanding of complex modeling techniques that examine seasonality using continuous curves such as splines, moving averages, ARIMA, and spectral analysis. He also explored applications of these techniques for modeling real-time patterns in outbreak signatures of SARS-CoV-2 in the US and cholera in Yemen. As he works to complete his dissertation, Ryan is pushing to incorporate real-world applications of his research and will stress the importance of these methodological techniques beyond just academic research. Suzannah Gerber As a NIFA fellow in the division of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science, Suzannah Gerber is conducting research on a variety of projects related to nutrition, dietary patterns, health, and behavior science. Suzannah successfully completed coursework milestones in Fall 2021 including Advanced Data Analysis (ADA), Nutrition Epidemiology, and SAS Programming. She is also doing coursework in a directed study on Behavioral Economics in the context of online grocery shopping, and Intermediate Epidemiology. Suzannah conducts research in multiple Tufts labs: 1) the Dean Mozaffarian research lab where she is now leading research on consumer behavior related to food and beverages; 2) the EPI LAB of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Resource Center on Aging (HNRCA) , where she is developing novel metrics to analyze adherence and compliance to special dietary patterns; 3) The Energy Metabolism Lab of the HNRCA where she has developed a novel multi-component nutritional supplement and a research plan for predicting and analyzing nutrient retention after various processing methods. Suzannah moderated two sessions at the Tufts Nutrition and Data Symposium and was a guest lecturer to medical and dental students at Harvard Medical School hosted by the nutrition interest group. Suzannah's work in ADA served as a springboard to develop the metrics on Adherence and Compliance mentioned above, and she is currently finalizing the manuscript she drafted in that course with anticipated submission for publication in Summer 2022. In addition to that manuscript, in Fall of 2021 Suzannah had an abstract accepted to the Society of Behavioral Medicine, for which she won an award in spring 2022. During spring of 2022, Suzannah had 6 abstracts accepted with her as first author, 5 to the American Society for Nutrition annual meeting and 1 to the Agricultural & Applied Economics annual meeting. Suzannah is currently prioritizing completing her coursework and preparing for her Qualifying Exams while developing 3 manuscripts as lead author.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Simpson RB, Kulinkina AV, Naumova EN. Investigating seasonal patterns in enteric infections: a systematic review of time series methods. Epidemiol Infect, 2022; 1-25 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0950268822000243
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Simpson RB, Lauren BN, Schipper KH, McCann JC, Tarnas MC, Naumova EN. Critical periods, critical time points and day-of-the-week effects in COVID-19 surveillance data: an example in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2022; 19, 1321 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031321
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Simpson RB, Babool S, Tarnas MC, Kaminski PM, Hartwick MA, Naumova EN. Signatures of cholera outbreak during the Yemeni Civil War, 2016-2019. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2022; 19, 378 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19010378
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Simpson RB, Babool S, Tarnas MC, Kaminski PM, Hartwick MA, Naumova EN. Dynamic mapping of cholera spread and conflict severity during the Yemeni Civil War, 2016-2019. J Public Health Policy. 2022. In-press.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Zhang Y, Simpson RB, Sallade LE, Sanchez E, Monahan KM, Naumova EN. Evaluating completeness of foodborne outbreak reporting in the United States, 1998-2019. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2022; 19, 2898 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19052898.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Zhou B, Liang S, Monahan KM, Singh GM, Simpson RB, Reedy J, Zhang J, DeVane A, Cruz MS, Marshak A, Mozaffarian D, Wang D, Semenova I, Roura IM, Prozorovscaia D, Naumova EN. Food and nutrition systems dashboards: A systematic review. Adv Nutr. Accepted in March 2022.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Sanchez E, Simpson RB, Zhang Y, Sallade LE, Naumova EN. Exploring risk factors of recall-associated foodborne disease outbreaks in the United States, 1998-2019. Int J Environ Res Public Health. Submitted Jan 2022.
|
Progress 04/03/20 to 04/02/21
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?To accomplish the stated goal of training the recruited candidates, we ensure that both fellows complete their training plan, successfully passed the qualifying examinations, actively pursue opportunities for small grant funding, presentation of preliminary results at the national and international conferences, initiate and lead university-wide and school-wide activities to develop strong leadership skills. We are developing the state-of-the-art training in three major domains: a) data analytics, visualization, and management by providing a wide range of options in building technical skills; b) Friedman focal disciplines and themes: healthy food choices, food safety, food quality, and sustainable agriculture by expanding the network of researchers and practitioners for Fellows to access; and c) critical science communication and leadership skills by offering opportunities in developing student-led initiatives, supervising and guiding Fellows' first attempts in reviewing manuscripts for scientific journals, and grant writing. In Fall 2020, we had initiated the new Doctoral Seminar course at the NEDS program and offered it to the Fellows and 9 other doctoral students. This seminar is co-designed with doctoral students to address students' pressing needs and aspiration goals. The topics covered by the seminar include effective time management, skill-building in technical writing, tips for a publication submission process, and preparations for qualifying exams. Fellows have received training in nutritional epidemiology, advanced statistics and data analytics, data visualizations and effective communication, geospatial analyses, remote sensing, and grant writing. Such training is offered via regular upper-level courses, specially designed workshops, and professional seminars and webinars. Technical skill development has included familiarity with a range of statistical programming software, literature review management software, and techniques in data visualization. Several regular upper-level courses are participating in the ongoing NSF-funded project focusing to improve graduate training in data analytics. Ryan Simpson is engaged in this project and gaining his experience in developing educational material, IRB approvals, collecting and evaluating surveys. The course in Advances Data Analytics aims to guide each student through the process of data analysis and report preparation. Upon the completion of the course, the most successful students submit their first abstracts to the scientific conferences, draft a manuscript, and publish their work in academic journals. Both Ryan and Breanne completed the course and published their abstracts and papers resulting from the coursework [see ref 1-7]. In addition to technical training and conference-based professional development, both Breanne and Ryan have gained experience assisting in teaching graduate courses and writing grants for supporting intern stipends. Breanne taught sessions in two graduate courses related to data analysis and sample size calculation. Ryan served as a teaching assistant for two courses on training public health professionals in biostatistics and assisted in course development and teaching for two advanced biostatistics and visualization courses. Both Breanne and Ryan completed the grant writing course and worked together to write a small grant through the Tufts Institute for the Environment, which allowed for the hiring of an undergraduate intern to help with research. In addition to funding students, Breanne has mentored two students working on this environmental research grant and helped them gain experience in spatial and statistical analyses, as well as identify and pursue their own research interests related to food production and the environment. Ryan has also mentored ~15 students on various projects related to food safety, foodborne illnesses, the environment, and the intersection between these topic areas. The developed program has allowed fellows to collaborate with an interdisciplinary team within Tufts University and at other institutions abroad including presentations at international conferences with diverse audiences. Team-based project-based research has provided skills in project coordination, conducting research as a primary investigator, and reviewing peers' publications both informally and formally as academic journal reviewers. Both Ryan and Breanne completed their first formal paper reviews for the Journal of Public Health Policy, Springer Nature Publishing Group (PI- Naumova, Editor-in-Chief). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Dissemination of findings has occurred through virtual conference presentations at the American Society for Nutrition's NUTRITION conference (Seattle, WA USA, May 2020) [see ref 1-4], the Diponegoro University's 6th International Conference on Tropical and Coastal Region Eco-Development (Semarang Indonesia, October 2020) [see ref 8-12], the Consortium of Universities for Global Health conferences (Washington DC, March 2021) [see ref 13-15]. The work presented by Ryan was highlighted by the media ("Researchers Identify Seasonal Peaks for Foodborne Illness Outbreaks" by Linda Larsen for Food Poisoning Bulletin, June 2, 2020; https://foodpoisoningbulletin.com/2020/researchers-identify-seasonal-peaks-for-foodborne-illness-outbreaks/ ). In preparation for these conference presentations, Fellows have presented their work regularly to students and faculty of research teams. Presentations have also occurred beyond research groups to faculty at the Friedman School and a diverse body of graduate students from different schools within Tufts University through collaboration with Tufts Institute of the Environment. Preliminary findings have been published in reputable academic journals such as Nature Scientific Reports and Nature Data [see ref 5-7]. Two publications have been submitted to the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and Environmental Health Perspectives [see ref 20-21]. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We are currently in the process of finalizing the third candidate to start the program in the Fall of 2021. We expect all Fellows to progress with their research projects, lead the Student Research Symposium in 2022, and actively participate in the developments of the Special Issue for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health on solving pressing issues of the environment, food safety, nutrition, and health with data analytics [see ref 8-12, 22-24]. We expect Fellow to maintain their e-profiles on leading platforms, including LinkedIn, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and regularly update their personal webpages at FSNSP. The sections below provide a brief description of Fellow's activities for Year 2. Breanne Langlois Breanne is now pursuing her dissertation research which will focus on studying the impacts of natural disasters and flooding on diet diversity and food insecurity. Using Indonesia as a case example, she plans to also explore the future climate-related impacts on food production and food insecurity in the US. She will form her thesis committee, finalize research aims, and defend her doctoral thesis proposal. She plans to link existing survey data with geospatial, remote sensing, and other data sources. She will further explore how Twitter data may be used for these purposes. She plans to submit preliminary findings of her research to a range of professional conferences, including the 22nd International Congress of Nutrition in Tokyo, Japan; the 7th International Conference on Tropical and Coastal Region Eco-Development; Nutrition 2022; the European Public Health Conference. An IRB proposal has also been submitted to the Tufts SBER IRB committee for conducting qualitative research in Indonesia. This research involves focus group discussions and key informant interviews with participants being identified from among sector experts, researchers, and stakeholders involved in natural resources management, agriculture, and urban and regional development in the Central Java Province. Information gathered from this research in Indonesia will be used to validate findings from previous analyses and as ground-truthing to improve methodology development. This year Breanne will supervise a graduate student admitted to the Tufts Sustainable Water management program as part of FSNSP. This experience will help Breanne to hone her project management skills and gain support in data preparation, model testing, and validation. Ryan Simpson Ryan is currently working on the main components of his dissertation, present his findings at the national interdisciplinary conferences, and expand his research network. The main research component includes finalizing a systematic review of time series methods and models applied to assess foodborne outbreak seasonality, revisions of submitted works when available, conducting extensive data analyses for the outlined specific aims, and preparation of publications for submission. The review as well as his recently published works on disease seasonality aim to demonstrate how seasonality features can assist in informing near-real-time forecasts of foodborne illnesses. This research would result in a publication on foodborne illness seasonality as a mid-term goal (3-5 months) to guide the process of estimation of seasonal peak timing and amplitude in combination with distributional characteristics, such as l-moments, to accurately describe foodborne outbreaks and their severity. In addition, Ryan will expand his research efforts to conduct a spatiotemporal analysis of how food insecurity and food prices are associated with cholera outbreaks during the Yemeni Civil War in 2016-2019. This work is an extension of his early efforts to describe challenges when extracting, aligning, and merging time series illness, food insecurity, environmental and economic datasets and demonstrated how average smoothers applied to this data can be used to detect patterns and identify clusters of cholera outbreaks across 20 of 21 Yemeni governorates [see ref 16-20, 25]. Ryan's long-term goal (4-8 months) is to investigate associations between cholera outbreak incidence and risk factors related to food insecurity, food prices, meteorological patterns, and war conflict. This study will investigate both how these risk factors may drive the onset and intensity of incidence during outbreaks and how these risk factors may increase due to outbreaks. As the result of the Tufts Research and Data Symposium collaboration and networking, Ryan had initiated several student-led research projects aiming to understand changes in food security and vaccination hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. One project is targeting the assessment of nutrition in clinical settings; the second project explores secondary data on food access and vaccination hesitancy. The former project resulted in the creation of a Nutrition Response Toolkit for Humanitarian Crises to inform practices and policies for delivering nutrition services and conducting nutrition assessments for COVID-19 patients in field hospital settings [see ref 21]. The latter project on secondary data analyses has been an opportunity for Ryan to coordinate research efforts among a team of undergraduate and graduate students from multiple academic concentrations and a broad range of data analysis skillsets. This experience is essential for Ryan in honing his critical thinking, science communication, and leadership skills.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
To accomplish the stated goal of recruiting three (3) Ph.D. Fellows in the Targeted Expertise Shortage Area (TESA) of Data Science, we tapped on the outstanding pool of applicants in all programs of FSNSP. We aimed to identify candidates that demonstrated deep interests in data analytics and could well articulate why the combination of skills in data analysis and Friedman focal disciplines and themes would be beneficial for their career. In Year 1 we recruited two Fellows: Breanne Langlois, MS, and Ryan Simpson, MS. The section below provides a brief description of their activities for Year 1. Breanne Langlois As a NIFA fellow in the division of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science (NEDS), Breanne Langlois is conducting research in the areas of climate change vulnerability, methodological approaches and development, and climate-related impacts on agriculture and food and nutrition security. She has successfully completed her formal training, passed a qualifying examination, and identified the primary area of research. Breanne compiled a comprehensive repository of available public data sources including a range of remote sensing, flood monitoring, geospatial, statistical, and survey data to identify clusters and emerging hotspot locations pertaining to flooding activity over time. Using advanced analytic and data manipulation skills gained through her doctoral training, Breanne successfully linked government and global flood monitoring data sources, which will be used to deepen her understanding of flooding and its related impacts on food production. She is developing a vulnerability metric and is currently working on a publication detailing these findings, which also discusses the methodological development, limitations, and data challenges, and ground-truthing opportunities to improve our understanding. During the reporting period, Breanne together with Ryan have successfully applied and received funding for a small grant through the Tufts Institute of the Environment (TIE), which allowed for the hiring of an undergraduate student intern to assist with research. She and Ryan had presented preliminary results at the national nutrition conference [see ref 1-4]. Breanne led the TIE project, which was focused on climate change vulnerability assessment in Indonesia, methodology development, current data challenges, and future opportunities. She managed the administrative aspects of the project, created and maintained the schedule for regular zoom meetings with the team members, and supervised the undergraduate intern, and led the preparation of several presentations at the 6th International Conference on Tropical and Coastal Region Eco-Development, hosted by the Diponegoro University, Semarang, Indonesia in October 2020 as part of the ongoing NSF-funded project focusing to establishing international training in environmental sustainability. Breanne and Ryan will be leading the compilation of publications for the Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health on solving pressing issues of the environment, food safety, nutrition, and health with data analytics. Ryan Simpson As a NIFA fellow in the division of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science, Ryan Simpson has conducted and coordinated several research projects related to nutrition, health, and the environment. He has successfully completed his formal training, passed a qualifying examination, identified the primary area of research, defended his thesis proposal, led numerous outreach activities, presented preliminary results at the national and international conferences, and published several papers in prominent scientific journals [see ref 1-7]. His research project focuses on applying time series methods for understanding trends in illness, driven by climate and environment, specifically foodborne outbreaks in the United States. He is aiming to adapt these data analysis methods for modeling the seasonality of foodborne illnesses and estimating the severity of foodborne outbreaks for common notifiable infections. These research projects have helped him develop skills in aligning, merging, managing, analyzing, and visualizing complex spatiotemporal data and relationships. This research also emphasized the importance of standardization and harmonization of research data to enable timely, targeted, and effective food safety policies, agricultural production health, and food hygiene inspections, and utilization of available public health surveillance system databases. During the reporting period, Fellows have received professional development opportunities by co-organizing and hosting the Tufts Research and Data Symposium (TRDS) for Food and Nutrition in March of 2021. The conference aims were inspired by the major goals of the NIFA grant and included: i) promoting transdisciplinary research in nutrition and public health, ii) aiding students to engage in professional networking beyond institutional and generational boundaries, and iii) encourage data analytics and science communication skill development for training the next generation of data scientists. The total conference attendees included 920 students, researchers, faculty, and working professionals from 158 academic universities, 221 professional organizations, 50 countries, and nearly three-quarters of all US states. Ryan supervised the major activities of the conference and served on the conference planning committee. His involvement was instrumental in organizing a series of panel discussions intending to discuss data in the context of nutrition, health, and the environment and technical workshops aimed to provide data science skills to students. Breanne co-developed the largest and best-attended two-part technical workshop focused on statistical programming comparisons across RStudio, Stata, and SAS statistical software packages.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
4. Taylor, S., Fisher, K., Simpson, R.B., Naumova, E.N. Assessment of Adult Weight Status by Body Mass index (BMI) and the Association with Socio-Demographic Factors and Commonly Eaten Foods in Indonesia Between 20142015. Current Developments in Nutrition; 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdn/nzaa051_026.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
5. Simpson, R.B., Zhou, B. & Naumova, E.N. Seasonal synchronization of foodborne outbreaks in the United States, 19962017. Sci Rep 10, 17500 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74435-9.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
6. Simpson, R.B., Zhou, B., Alarcon Falconi, T.M. et al. An analecta of visualizations for foodborne illness trends and seasonality. Sci Data 7, 346 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-00677-x.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
7. Simpson, R.B., Gottlieb, J., Zhou, B., Hartwick, M.A., Naumova, E.N. Completeness of open access FluNet influenza surveillance data for Pan-America in 20052019. Sci Rep 11, 795 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-80842-9.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
1. Langlois, B.K., Simpson, R.B., Anyanwu, O.A., Marsh, E., Taylor, S., Naumova, E.N. Evaluating Indirect Impacts of Climate Change on Fishing and Farm Productivity Using the Indonesian Family Life Survey: An Example Exploring Natural Disasters and Migration. Current Developments in Nutrition; 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdn/nzaa042_006.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
2. Anyanwu, O.A., Simpson, R.B., Langlois, B.K., Naumova, E.N. Demographic and Psychosocial Correlates of Exclusive Breastfeeding Duration in Indonesia. Current Developments in Nutrition; 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdn/nzaa054_007.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
3. Simpson, R.B., Naumova, E.N. Associations Between Peaks of Foodborne Infections and Food Recalls. Current Developments in Nutrition; 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdn/nzaa061_116.
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