Research Spotlight: Biostatistics Impact on Child Health
Matthew Gurka, PhD, is a biostatistician. He collaborates with researchers from different disciplines to design studies and collect data. Some of those research questions lead to his own initatives. He worked with Mark DeBoer, MD, a pediatric endocrinologist at UVA Health Children's, to develop a metabolic syndrome (MetS) severity measure and calculator. MetS severity has been validated as a predictor of future disease.
They continue to collaborate on conditions that cause lifetime health impacts, like metabolic syndrome.
You can read more of Gurka's recent publications here.
How Biostatistics Is Revolutionizing Child Health Research
I'm a biostatistician that focuses on child health research.
What I love about being a collaborative biostatistician is I get to work with a lot of different researchers in a lot of different areas. They get to take their clinical questions and their research questions and turn them into real research, designing their studies and analyzing their data and ultimately answering their questions.
I'm also fortunate to be able to take some of those research questions and lead my own research from that.
My name is Matthew Gurka, and I'm professor and chair of the department of public health sciences here at UVA. As a biostatistician, I've been recently focusing on pragmatic clinical trials. These are real world clinical trials where we are randomizing, not patients, but providers or clinics to interventions to improve health outcomes in children. As an independent researcher, I continue to work with my longtime colleague in pediatrics, Mark DeBoer, on better ways to measure the metabolic syndrome to better predict diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Our research in metabolic syndrome has led to better ways to measure and track this condition, which will lead to earlier identification of future disease like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. As a biostatistician, it’s been especially gratifying working with investigators in a number of different areas of child health.
Just in the past two years, I've helped the development of a large cohort study looking at brain development in early childhood. I've designed a clinical trial that's testing the effectiveness of a mobile health app to improve health outcomes in teenagers with asthma, working with their parents. And I've helped design a pragmatic clinical trial to evaluate innovative ways to deliver care to children with diabetes.
What are you working on right now?
As a biostatistician, I am still leading the design/analysis of a few pragmatic clinical trials with colleagues at the University of Florida (my previous institution). We are wrapping up final analyses of a large trial to test different communication and engagement strategies with pediatricians and parents simultaneously to increase HPV vaccination rates in rural North Central Florida. I am also leading the design of a study of the ECHO (hub and spoke) model of care for patients with diabetes. Along with a colleague at UF, we recently were awarded funding from the NIH to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of a postpartum doula model of care among patients on Medicaid in Florida.
Since I arrived here at UVA, I am focusing my efforts on how to help the Department of Pediatrics implement screening for social drivers of health (SDoH) in primary care. I also am continuing to work with my long-time UVA colleague, Mark DeBoer, in studying how best to use our measure of metabolic syndrome severity across the span.
What are the most intriguing potential clinical applications of your work?
I am really focused on study designs to identify and evaluate approaches to implement tools, approaches, and processes to improve health outcomes. My current work, described above, is part of the growing field of “implementation science.” So much of our research does not translate to patients (individuals or populations). I am very intrigued by how we can better develop research designs and methods for quicker translation.
What made you choose UVA Health as the place to do your research?
I started my career here over 20 years ago – and I had the honor to come back recently to chair the same department (Public Health Sciences) where I began. It is so great to be back in this collaborative environment here at UVA.
How did you become interested in your area of research?
After getting my PhD in biostatistics, I started my career at UVA with only my statistical interests – namely, longitudinal data analysis. I was so fortunate that the Department of Pediatrics at the time was seeking biostatistical collaboration, and we started a partnership then that allowed me to work closely with dozens of pediatric researchers at UVA. I have since developed a real passion for child health research, and as a biostatistician, I have the pleasure to work with so many researchers doing really important work.
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