General Medical Disciplines– Department of Medicine

Social Determinants of Health

Disease, Disability and Death is a large collaborative project exploring social, environmental, medical, socio-demographic and occupational causes of injuries, chronic diseases, absenteeism and death in the workforce of a large multinational aluminum company. Because of the richness of available data sources, the population is also under study for responses to various changes in health, disability and pension benefits, as well as quality of health services under various health benefit design changes.

mrcullenDirected by Mark Cullen, MD the research team spans multiple disciplines—occupational medicine and nursing, rehabilitation medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics, industrial hygiene and ergonomics, and economics—and multiple institutions including Yale where the data are housed and managed,  UCSF, UCB, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, University of Pittsburgh, and MIT.

Other Stanford colleagues include Liran Einav, PhD, MA (Department of Economics) and—newly-- Manisha Desai, PhD, MS, MA of our own Quantitative Services Unit (QSU). The work is funded by a series of RO1 grants from The National Institute of Aging (NIA) and The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), as well as funds from non-profit foundations and the study company itself, Alcoa, Inc. To date there are approximately 30 papers that have been published or are in the pipeline from the collaboration, four doctoral theses and has provided multiple research opportunities for post-doctoral MD and non-MD fellows.

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