NCSU faculty Shu Yang and Brian Reich have been awarded an R01 by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The project is entitled “Spatial causal inference for wildland fire smoke effects on air pollution and health” and is a collaboration with Ana Rappold of the US EPA and Yawen Guan of Nebraska.
Project summary: Causal inference theory and methods are indispensable to biostatistics, but due to complications such as spatial correlation and spillover effects, methods applicable to spatial data are limited. In this project, we develop new causal methods to allow researchers to extract knowledge from observational spatial data. The methods are developed in the context of two large epidemiological studies of the effects of wildland fire smoke and preventative measures on air pollution exposure and respiratory health outcomes.