The Department of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health invites you to join us for our 39th Annual Thomas Francis, Jr. Memorial Lecture on Tuesday, January 20, 2015 at 4 p.m. The lecture will take place at the School of Public Health, Building 1, in Auditorium 1755.

This year’s guest speaker is Dr. Joel Schwartz. Dr. Schwartz is a Professor of Environmental Epidemiology at the School of Public Health at Harvard University.

Summary of Talk:
The last 30 years have seen great developments in our understanding of what we want to estimate to draw causal inferences. In general we contrast two potential outcomes, one of which has not occurred. We seek a surrogate for the unobserved outcome and understanding of the assumptions required for it to be a valid substitute. In general this development has generated alternative approaches in epidemiology and social science. Dr. Schwartz will briefly discuss these, and illustrate how we can use them to help draw causal inferences for environmental exposures. Dr. Schwartz will look at acute and chronic effects of exposure to particles and temperature, and at instrumental variables, propensity scores, and difference in differences approach.