Introduction to Epidemiology

Jennifer Fonda is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine, Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and a research health scientist at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Boston Healthcare System. She has over 20 years of experience as a researcher focused on advanced biostatistics and epidemiologic methods, with a particular interest in addiction, chronic pain, and suicide. She is the principal investigator of a VA clinical science research and development (CSR&D) Career Development Award (CDA-2) grant utilizing the VA electronic medical records to build predictor profiles for opioid use disorder and overdose among post-9/11 veterans. She also serves as a co-investigator for a National Institutes of Health (NIH) randomized clinical trial, and a consultant for two VA rehabilitation research and development (RR&D) CDA-2 grants. Additionally, Fonda is the Director of Biostatistics, Informatics, and Data Science at the Translational Research Center for Traumatic Brain Injury and Stress Disorders Center (TRACTS), a VA rehabilitation research and development traumatic brain injury national network. In addition to her research, she has served as instructor for several statistics and epidemiology courses to undergraduate and graduate students for 20 years. These courses introduced the basic principles and methods of epidemiology and biostatistics, demonstrated their applicability to public health and medicine, and provided students with fundamental skills necessary to interpret and critically evaluate the relevant literature.