My long term collaboration is focused in three major areas, STD, rheumatology and dentistry. I am the director of the Biostatistics Core for the Midwest STD Research Center and the Mid-America Adolescent STD Research Center. In rheumatology, osteoarthritis is the primary research area including the study of pharmacologic, educational, and surgical interventions. I am also the director of the Biostatistics Core for a program project to study the development of new diagnostic and treatment methods for early caries, with particular emphasis on new imaging techniques. My methodologic research has been based on my collaborative h projects. In this way, statistical developments have direct application to real problems. This strategy has led to a variety of biostatistical areas. For example, based on data routinely collected as part of a sexually transmitted diseases (STD) control program, I used a deterministic model to estimate the transmission rate for chlamydial infection. Similarly, I am developed (in collaboration with Andrew Zhou) a model of small area variation in knee replacement surgery by combining extra-Poisson regression models with empirical Bayes techniques. Currently, Wanzhu Tu and I are developing methods for modeling data collected using daily coital diaries. In addition, Andrew Zhou and I are working on extending methods for assessing diagnostic tests to correlated data based on the new dental imaging methods.
