Bor To Give Next ‘Mind the Gap’ Webinar
Dr. Jacob Bor will give the Office of Disease Prevention’s next Mind the Gap webinar about regression discontinuity designs in public health research on Thursday, Sept. 27 at 11 a.m.
Regression discontinuity designs offer an internally valid approach for causal inference without need for randomization. They can be implemented when an exposure is assigned at least in part based on a threshold rule: the party with more than 50 percent of the votes wins in a two-party election; the HIV patient with a CD4 count below 500 cells is offered therapy; residents downstream of a point pollution source swim in contaminated water. Historically, regression discontinuity designs have been underutilized in public health and medical research. However, the last few years have seen burgeoning use of this method. The presentation will review the theory behind regression discontinuity designs and their implementation, with a focus on examples in public health research.
Bor is assistant professor and Peter T. Paul career development professor in the departments of global health and epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health. His research applies the analytical tools of economics and data science to the study of population health, with a focus on HIV treatment and prevention in southern Africa. He will accept questions during the webinar via WebEx and Twitter. Use #NIHMtG.
Registration is required and can be done at https://prevention.nih.gov/education-training/methods-mind-gap/regression-discontinuity-designs-public-health-research.