Epidemiology Research

Scientific discovery, innovative training, and high-quality service through multidisciplinary collaboration to advance translational epidemiology, genomic medicine, and precision health.

HealthStreet is a community engagement program at the University of Florida that aims to improve the health of our community by bridging gaps in healthcare and health research.

The mission of SHARC is to improve health outcomes and reduce HIV transmission among the diverse range of populations affected by alcohol and HIV infection in Florida.

We are a diverse, interdisciplinary team who likes to tackle important questions in systems medicine by developing and using novel machine learning algorithms.

DISL’s interests are in the areas of data science and machine learning, with a particular focus on biomedical modelling.

As a psychiatric epidemiologist, Dr. Striley conducts community-engaged research that aims to increase community members’ recognition of need for health screening, mental health, and behavioral health services and to decrease barriers to those services.

The University of Florida is one of 21 institutions nationwide that have recruited families to participate in the ABCD Study. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States.

The HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study (HBCD), funded by a dozen Institutes, Centers, and Offices of the National Institutes of Health, is a multi-site, prospective cohort study of brain and child development from birth into middle childhood. The study will characterize typical trajectories of brain and child development and learn how various biologic, environmental, and social factors influence that development. The largest study of its kind ever conducted in the US, HBCD will enroll about 7,500 pregnant individuals from twenty-five sites across the US and follow their offspring through the first decade of life. Led by Drs. Kelly Gurka, Matthew Gurka, and Lisa Scott, the North Central Florida site for HBCD will enroll about 300 participants from a ten-county region, including Alachua, Bradford, Columbia, Dixie, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Levy, Marion, Suwannee, and Union Counties.

Dr. Wang also contributes her expertise on alcohol biosensors to support two newly funded NIH projects as Co-I. The first project (R01AA030481, PI: Weafer & Leeman) will determine the relationship between two vulnerability factors for alcohol use disorder (AUD) in young adults: impulsivity and subjective response to alcohol. The second project, Project REACT (R21AA029489, PI: Jaffe), involves the adaptation and evaluation of cognitive tasks to test theorized mechanisms underlying the connection between alcohol intoxication and risk behaviors within naturally occurring drinking episodes.

The Medical Marijuana and Me (M³) study is funded by the Consortium for Medical Marijuana Clinical Outcomes Research, led by Drs. Cook and Wang. It aims to collect information from patients about their medical marijuana use to inform Florida state policy and to guide physician practice for patient health outcomes. Currently, we already enrolled approximately 1000 participants across Florida to share their experiences with medical marijuana by completing online surveys.

The National Drug Early Warning System (NDEWS), funded by the University of Florida by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) as of April 2020, aims to provide the field with the most timely, salient, and valuable information on emerging substance use trends.

SARB2C is a group of investigators and students at UF with a focus on translational science regarding T0 to T4 substance use and addiction research.

The SMILE study is a 5-year R01 project funded by the National Institute on Aging in 2022 (R01AG071729, PI: Wang). This study will utilize technology-based assessments (EMA and Fitbit) to investigate the real-time and long-term effects of medical cannabis on older adults with chronic pain by enrolling and following 440 participants for 12 months while some initiating medical marijuana and others not.

The overarching goals are to advance understanding of the mechanisms influencing adherence to contemporary HIV therapeutic regimens and to incorporate alcohol-related interventions into the emerging clinic- and community-based strategies to achieve and maintain HIV viral suppression across diverse populations. Dr. Wang leads the effort of assessing alcohol use and its antecedents via a wrist-worn alcohol biosensor (the Skyn biosensor) and smartphone-based EMA and seeking to integrate it into an existing mobile app intervention (the Positive Links app).

“Project ENGAGE” (PI: Wang) is funded in 2021 as one of the three research projects within the SHARE P01 program funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in 2022 (P01AA029547, MPI: Naar & MacDonell). This project aims to develop an mHealth suite for young people with HIV integrating the wrist-worn alcohol biosensor with various engagement strategies via a smartphone app (eWrapper Ranch).

“Less is More Study” is a P01 program (P01AA029543, MPIs: Cook & Cohen) to identify and ultimately implement new/improved, targeted interventions that will improve outcomes related to cognitive and brain dysfunction in persons with HIV who drink alcohol.Dr. Wang serves as the UF site PI of another research project and leads the effort related to the use of a wrist-worn alcohol biosensor as a monitoring tool for contingency management