Season 1, Episode 7: Descriptive Epidemiology with Dr. Matthew Fox
Welcome to Episode 7 of Season 1 of the Emerging Scholar Podcast!
On today’s episode, we're thrilled to welcome Dr. Matt Fox, a professor in the departments of epidemiology and global health at Boston University. Dr. Fox’s research spans treatment outcomes in HIV treatment programs, infectious disease epidemiology, and epidemiological methods. He is also the co-host of one of our favourite podcasts, SeriousEpi, alongside Dr. Haley Banack, who joined us on episode five.
Our primary focus today is on a paper from 2022 that Dr. Fox co-authored with Jesse Edwards and Katie Lesko, which outlines a comprehensive framework for descriptive epidemiology. Over the next three episodes, we’ll focus on introducing three key types of epidemiological designs that you might consider for your first scientific project - 1. Descriptive Epidemiology; 2. Predictive Epidemiology; and 3. Causal Epidemiology. This discussion and the accompanying paper serves as the perfect starting point for understanding descriptive epidemiology.
Dr. Fox will explain what descriptive epidemiology can and cannot do, and provide practical insights into how to approach your first descriptive epidemiological project. For me personally, learning about this framework was eye-opening—it inspired new research projects in my own lab that focused on describing trends in various conditions across populations. This interview was incredibly poignant, and I’m excited to share it with you - if you’re just starting out in epidemiology, or are looking to deepen your understanding of descriptive methods, our conversation with Dr. Fox is a must-listen. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Papers & Resources That We Touched On In This Episode:
Guests
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Dr. Matthew Fox
Matthew Fox, DSc, MPH, is a Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Global Health at Boston University. Dr. Fox joined Boston University in 1999. His research interests include treatment outcomes in HIV-treatment programs, infectious disease epidemiology (with specific interests in HIV and pneumonia), and epidemiologic methods. Dr. Fox works on ways to improve retention in HIV-care programs in South Africa from the time of testing HIV-positive through long-term treatment. As part of this work, he is involved in analyses to assess the impact of changes in South Africa’s National Treatment Guidelines for HIV. Dr. Fox also does research on quantitative bias analysis and co-authored a book on these methods, Applying Quantitative Bias Analysis to Epidemiologic Data.
He is also the host of a public health journal club podcast called Free Associations designed to help people stay current in the public health literature and think critically about the quality of research studies and a podcast on Epidemiologic Methods called SERious Epi. He currently teaches a third-level epidemiologic methods class, Advanced Epidemiology as well as two other doctoral level epidemiologic methods courses. Dr. Fox is a graduate of the Boston University School of Public Health with a master’s degree in epidemiology and biostatistics and a doctorate in epidemiology.