Epidemiologic Studies & Biostatistics
Do you need to understand health outcomes from occupational and environmental exposures?
If you need to evaluate the relationship between certain exposures of individuals or a population and the disease outcomes that result, epidemiologic studies and biostatistics can provide needed insights.
ORAU’s experts provide evaluation of the exposure-disease relationship through health surveillance programs, independent, scientific investigations, health risk assessments and large cohort studies to inform human health protections procedures and policies.
Our team of epidemiologists, biostatisticians, health physicists, industrial hygienists and toxicologists offer comprehensive expertise in epidemiologic studies of occupational exposures and health. This includes study design, surveys, data capture and historical document retrieval, comprehensive literature reviews, data exploration and health data analytics.
We are highly specialized in the knowledge of radiological and beryllium exposures based on a long history and unique depth of experience with occupational and environmental health studies on these contaminants. We have also developed significant capability in understanding health outcomes from titanium dioxide and other chemical exposures.
What we offer
- Independent scientific investigations
- Epidemiologic study design and protocols
- Comprehensive literature reviews
- Health surveys and surveillance programs
- Data capture, collection and management
- Health data exploration and analytics
- Biostatistical modeling
- Advanced statistical methods
- Expertise in statistical software: SAS, SPSS, R, Epicure
Customers we serve
- U.S. Department of Energy
- U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
- U.S. Department of Defense
- National Council on Radiation Protection & Measurements
- Environmental Protection Agency
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
- NASA
- Chemours
- DuPont
Our Experts
Donna Cragle, Ph.D.
Expertise: Occupational epidemiology, design and implementation of large-scale worker health studies and programs, manages a program of more than 200 experts and professionals
- Adjunct faculty, University of Tennessee
- Lead epidemiologist/founder of beryllium lymphocyte proliferation testing at ORAU
- Management advisor, ORAU Team providing dose reconstructions to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health for the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act
- Director, National Supplemental Screening Program providing media screening to former U.S. Department of Energy workers nationwide
- Lead epidemiologist, medical screening program for residents affected by TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash spill
Betsy Ellis, Ph.D.
Expertise: Occupational epidemiology, radiation epidemiology, ethics of use of human participants in research
- Member, Task Group 64 Cancer Risk from Alpha Radiation, International Commission on Radiological Protection
- Chair, Oak Ridge Side-Wide Institutional Review Board
- Vice Chair, Central DOE Institutional Review Board
- Presenter, Health Physics Society Annual Meeting, July 2017
- Presenter, Radiation Research Society Meeting, October 2016
Ashley Golden, Ph.D.
Expertise: Biostatistics, epidemiology, radiation exposure, occupational health
- Awardee: Early Stage Radiation Investigator Award, Conference on Radiation and Health and Radiation Research Society, October 2016
- Presenter, International Symposium on Epidemiology in Occupational Health, Edinburgh, Scotland, August 2017
- Presenter, Health Physics Society Annual Meeting, July 2017
- Presenter, American Public Health Association, November 2016
- Reviewer, Health Physics Journal, NCRP technical reports, and PLOS One Journal
Select Publications
- Golden A, Ellis E, Tomenson J, Le H. 2018. Comparison of Risk Estimates from Cox Proportional Hazards and Poisson Modeling for Association of Occupational Titanium Dioxide Exposure and Selected Causes of Death. Annals of Epidemiology (In review).
- Le H, Tomenson J, Warheit D, Fryzek J, Golden A, Ellis E. 2018. A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Occupational Titanium Dioxide Exposure and Lung Cancer Mortality. Occupational and Environmental Medicine. American Journal of Industrial Hygiene (Accepted).
- Boice J, Ellis E, Golden A, Girardi D, Cohen S, Chen H, Mumma M, Leggett R, Shore R. 2018. The Past Informs the Future: The Million Worker Study and the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works Cohort. Health Physics Journal. 114(4): 381-385.
- Ellis E, Boice J, Leggett R, Kerr G, Golden A, Girardi D, Cohen S, Mumma M, and Shore R. 2018. Dosimetry is Key to Good Epidemiology: Workers at Mallinckrodt Chemical Works had 5 Different Source Exposures. Health Physics Journal. 114(4): 386-397.
- Smith D, Golden A, Stange B, Newman L, Cragle D, Barker L, Morz P, Weitzenkamp D, Baron A, and Ghosh D. 2018. Clinical and Laboratory Factors Contributing to Uninterpretable Beryllium Lymphocyte Proliferation Tests (BeLPT). American Journal of Industrial Medicine.
- Stange B, Newman L, Golden A, and D Cragle. 2016. Integrated Approach to Health Screening of Former Department of Energy Workers Detects both Occupational and Non-occupational Illness. American Journal of Industrial Medicine. 59 (3): 200-211.
Contact us
For more information or to request support with epidemiologic studies or biostatistics, contact Dr. Ashley Golden at 865.241.3744, ashley.golden@orau.org, or Dr. Betsy Ellis at 865.576.3528, betsy.ellis@orau.org.
For more information about contracting with ORAU, contact Dominic Moro at 865.241.1446 or dominic.moro@orau.org.