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News & Events |
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| June 2,
2008 |
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MVPreg 1.0 available
for download
The MVPreg program computes a general multivariate probit
regression model for the analysis of multivariate
binary data.
Download the program |
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| May 21, 2008 |
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Robert
D. Gibbons appointed to Department
of Veterans Affairs expert panel
Robert D. Gibbons, Director of UIC Center for
Health Statistics, has been appointed to a
nine-member national expert panel that will
provide professional opinion, interpretation,
and conclusions
on information and data to the “Blue
Ribbon Work Group on Suicide Prevention in
the Veterans Population.” The expert
panel will also make recommendations to the
work group
on opportunities
for improvement in the US Department of Veterans
Affair (VA) programs.
Read
more about the work group's goals in the VA
press release. |
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| May 19, 2008 |
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Dulal
K. Bhaumik elected a 2008
Fellow of the American Statistical Association
Dulal K. Bhaumik, Professor of Biostatistics,
Psychiatry and Bio-engineering has been elected
a 2008 Fellow of the American Statistical Association
(ASA) for his outstanding contributions
to the development of Optimal Designs; Construction
of Prediction and Tolerance Limits for Environmental
Data; Hypotheses Testing for
Mental Health Research; for Development of Statistical
Methodology and Dissemination of Software for Analyzing
Functional Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (fMRI) Data; Statistical Education through
outstanding teaching and service to the profession.
From the ASA By-Laws: "By the honorary title of Fellow the Association
recognizes full members of established reputation who have made outstanding
contributions in some aspect of statistical work." Given annually,
this is a great honor as the numbers of recipients
are limited to no more than 1/3 of 1% of the ASA membership.
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| April 23, 2008 |
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Subhash
Aryal receives the 2008 Haenszel Research Award
The Haenszel Research Award is presented
annually to an outstanding student in the Epidemiology
and Biostatistics Division. This award is acknowledged
at a special awards ceremony,
and the winner receives a voucher for $200
to be used for travel, books, software, or equipment
relevant to their work. The intent
of this award is to foster high quality research
among Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division
students.
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| April 2, 2008 |
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Computerized adaptive testing
shown to dramatically reduce administration time and patient and
clinician burden
In the lead article of the April
2008 issue of Psychiatric Services, Robert D. Gibbons et al. investigate
the combination of item response theory and computerized adaptive testing (CAT)
as a means to reduce the time required to administer a collection of extensive,
fixed-length psychiatric instruments for mental health measurement and diagnostic
purposes. The methodology described in Using
Computerized Adaptive Testing to Reduce the Burden of Mental Health Assessment  streamlines
and individualizes the measurement process, increases measurement precision and
decreases respondent and clinician burden.
The article is featured in the issue's This
Month's Highlights and
is further discussed in the Commentary, Are
We Ready for Computerized Adaptive Testing |
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| September 1, 2007 |
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Study connects suicidality warnings
to a decrease in SSRI prescriptions and an increase in youth suicide
rates
The study examines whether U.S. and European regulatory agencies issued suicidality
warnings led to a decrease in SSRI prescriptions for children and adolescents
and consequently an increase in suicide rates as a result of untreated depression.
These findings are presented in the “Early
Evidence on the Effects of Regulators’ Suicidality Warnings on SSRI Prescriptions
and Suicide in Children and Adolescents” article by Robert D. Gibbons,
Ph.D., C. Hendricks Brown, Ph.D., Kwan Hur, Ph.D., Sue M. Marcus, Ph.D., Dulal
K. Bhaumik, Ph.D., Joëlle A. Erkens, Pharm.D., Ph.D., Ron M.C. Herings,
Pharm.D., Ph.D., and J. John Mann, M.D.
The article appears in the September
2007 issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. |
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| July 1, 2007 |
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Study shows decline in
suicide attempts with antidepressant
treatment
A study of 226,866 veterans diagnosed with depression
during 2003-2004 determined that the number of suicide attempts declined once
treatment began, and that the rate of suicide attempts was lower in depressed
veterans who took antidepressants than in those who did not.
The study is described in the “Relationship
Between Antidepressants and Suicide Attempts: An Analysis of the Veterans Health
Administration Data Sets” article by
Robert D. Gibbons, Ph.D., C. Hendricks Brown, Ph.D., Kwan Hur, Ph.D., Sue M.
Marcus, Ph.D., Dulal K. Bhaumik, Ph.D. and J. John Mann, M.D.
The
article appears in the July
2007 issue of The
American Journal of Psychiatry, the official journal
of the American Psychiatric Association (read
the News Release ).
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| March 23, 2007 |
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JASA Associate Editor invitation
Dr. Dulal K. Bhaumik has been invited to serve
as an Associate Editor of the Journal
of the American Statistical Association (JASA). |
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| January 18, 2007 |
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BIFACTOR available for download
The BIFACTOR program estimates the bifactor model for ordinal and dichotomous
data.
Download the program |
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| December 19, 2006 |
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MIXZIP 1.0 installation program available for
download
MIXZIP 1.0 provides the maximum marginal likelihood estimates of
mixed-effects Zero-Inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression models.
Download the installation program |
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| November 1, 2006 |
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Study links higher county-level antidepressant
prescription rates to lower early
adolescent suicide rates
A county-by-county study of the entire United States found that suicide rates
among children ages 5-14 during the period 1996-1998 were lower in counties with
higher numbers of antidepressant pills prescribed per person. These findings
are presented in the article "The
Relationship Between Antidepressant Prescription Rates and Rate of Early Adolescent
Suicide" by Robert D. Gibbons, Ph.D., Kwan Hur, Ph.D., Dulal K. Bhaumik,
Ph.D., and J. John Mann, M.D., of the Center for Health Statistics, University
of Illinois at Chicago, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia
University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
The
article appears in the November
2006 issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry, the official journal
of the American Psychiatric Association (read
the News Release ). In this same issue, Dr. Gregory E. Simon, M.D., M.P.H.,
of the Group Health's Center for Health Studies compares the study's findings
to
those of other randomized trials and large observational studies in the editorial "How
Can We Know Whether Antidepressants Increase Suicide Risk?" |
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| September 25, 2006 |
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The Institute of Medicine reviews the U.S.
Drug Safety System
June 2005 marked the first meeting of a committee of academic and industry experts
appointed by the Institute of Medicine to review the activities conducted by
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and to make recommendations to improve
risk assessment, surveillance and the safe use of drugs. Fifteen months later,
the Assessment of the U.S. Drug Safety System committee, which includes Dr. Robert
D. Gibbons, has published its findings and recommendations in its report released
on September 22, 2006: The
Future of Drug Safety: Promoting and Protecting the Health of the Public.
Read about the report's likelihood to intensify the debate over the current state
of the U.S. federal system in charge of approving and regulating drugs and the
proposed reforms of the F.D.A. in the New York Times article: Study
Condemns F.D.A.'s Handling of Drug Safety (free registration required). |
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| September 18, 2006 |
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NIMH Awards Five-Year $3M Competitive Renewal
for Gibbons CAT Grant
NIMH awarded a five-year, $3 million competitive renewal of the Mental Health
Computerized Adaptive Testing Grant to Robert D. Gibbons, Ph.D. The aim
of the investigation is to develop and evaluate computerized adaptive testing
programs and algorithms for assessing depression. The original study demonstrated
the feasibility of item response theory (IRT), and computerized adaptive testing
(CAT) in the development and administration of a large mental health rating scale.
Using an item bank of 626 mood and anxiety disorder symptom items, the investigators
found that 90% of the items in the item bank were discriminating of high and
low levels of mood disorders, and the bi-factor IRT model did an excellent job
of accounting for the clustering of items within symptom domains. The initial
study also found that CAT administration of the test resulted in a 95% reduction
in the number of items administered to an individual subject (24 out of 626 items
using simulated CAT and 31 items for live CAT testing), and the correlation between
the CAT based impairment rating and the score based on all 626 items was r=0.93.
Based on these results, the competitive renewal proposes to use IRT and CAT to
develop a CAT Depression Inventory (CAT-DI). |
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| May 26, 2006 |
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Drs. Dulal
K. Bhaumik and Robert D.
Gibbons to receive the 2006 W. J. Youden Award
"Confidence
Regions for Random-Effects Calibration Curves with Heteroscedastic
Errors" by Dulal K. Bhaumik and Robert D. Gibbons,
published last year in the journal Technometrics has
been declared this year's winner of the W. J. Youden Award
in Interlaboratory Testing, from the American Statistical Association. |
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| September 30, 2003 |
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Robert
Gibbons to receive Harvard Award in
Psychiatric Epidemiology & Biostatistics
The Biostatistics Department of the Harvard School of Public Health today announced
that Robert Gibbons, Ph.D., will receive this year's Harvard Award in Psychiatric
Epidemiology and Biostatistics. The award recognizes Dr. Gibbons' lifelong career
contributions that have significantly advanced the field of Psychiatric Biostatistics.
Dr. Gibbons will present the award lecture at the Harvard School of Public Health
this Fall. |
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| September 30, 2003 |
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Statistical
Methods for Detection and Quantification of Environmental Contamination by
Dr. Robert D. Gibbons and David E. Coleman receives top rating in Amstat News
The book, Statistical Methods for Detection and Quantification of Environmental
Contamination, was included in the top five books for statisticians.
Read the review in Amstat News |
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