Season 1, Episode 5: Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGS) with Dr. Hailey Banack
Welcome to Episode 5 of Season 1 of the Emerging Scholar Podcast!
On today’s episode, we’re excited to speak with Dr. Haley Banack, an
associate professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Novo Nordisk
Research Professor in Health Equity of Chronic Illness Prevention at the
University of Toronto. Dr. Banack is an epidemiologist with expertise in
obesity, aging, epidemiological methods, causal inference, and life course
epidemiology. She is also the co-host of the Serious Epi podcast series
alongside Dr. Matt Fox.
In this episode, we delve into the world of Directed Acyclic Graphs, or DAGs, a
critical epidemiological tool for visualizing and understanding causal
relationships to guide your data analyses. Dr. Banack will explain why DAGs are
crucial at the outset of any research project, especially for emerging
scholars. This is a concept we’ve introduced in our own lab, and Dr. Banack is
a strong advocate for using DAGs, both in her work and on her podcast.
If you’re looking to enhance your research design and strengthen your analysis
techniques, this conversation is an essential listen. We’re looking forward to
a great discussion on how you can apply DAGs to your first research projects
and make more informed decisions as you move forward in your scholarly journey.
Papers & Resources That We Touched On In This Episode:
- Dr. Banack’s Podcast with Dr. Matt Fox - Serious Epi
- Resource To Create Your Own Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)
- Testing Graphical Causal Models Using The R Package
- SERious Epi Podcast Episode on DAGs - Confounding: Ten Thousand Arrows Going Into A Bunch of Squiggly Things
- Introduction to DAGs in Pediatrics
- Suggested Reading by Steve Cole on DAGs - Illustrating Bias Due to Conditioning on a Collider
- Core Textbook in Epidemiology
Guests
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Dr. Hailey Banack
Hailey Banack, PhD is an Assistant Professor in Epidemiology in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. She also holds the Novo Nordisk Health Equity and Chronic Illness Prevention Professorship. Her research focuses on obesity and aging, particularly in older adults. She is interested in novel measurement approaches for body composition in older adults and understanding age-related change in body composition among women and individuals from racial/ethnic minority groups. As part of Dr. Banack’s current NIH-funded research she developed an innovative protocol for measuring muscle mass remotely (at home) using D3-Creatine (D3Cr) and will examine the longitudinal relationship between muscle mass, obesity, and chronic disease outcomes. She has a particular interest in epidemiologic methods, including quantitative bias analysis and causal inference. In addition to her program of research, Dr. Banack enjoys teaching epidemiology and is the co-host of a podcast called SERious Epi. The SERious Epi podcast is aimed at trainees and practising epidemiologists who want to learn more about study design and analytic approaches used in epidemiology.