Research Team

The Cape Cod Health Study is a research study being conducted by a team of investigators at Boston University School of Public Health with funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Investigators

Ann Aschengrau, ScD

Dr. Aschengrau has conducted epidemiologic research on environmental pollution and the risk of disease for over 30 years. In particular, she has led investigations on the relationship between drinking water contaminants and abnormal pregnancy outcomes, neurological disorders, and cancer. In 2003, Dr. Aschengrau published the book, Essentials of Epidemiology in Public Health, with coauthor George R. Seage III, Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Now in its fourth edition, the best-selling book has been used in more than 100 schools across the United States. Dr. Aschengrau has served as a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Gulf War and Health, as a consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry, and as a jury member for the annual John Heinz Memorial Award honoring an individual whose work has made a significant impact on the environment. She is currently an associate editor of the journal Environmental Health.

Renee Boynton-Jarrett, MD, ScD

Renée Boynton-Jarrett, MD, ScD is a pediatrician and social epidemiologist and the founding director of the Vital Village Community Engagement Network (www.vitalvillage.org). Her work focuses on the role of early-life adversities as life-course social determinants of health. Dr. Boynton-Jarrett has a specific concentration on psychosocial stress and neuroendocrine and reproductive health outcomes, including obesity and early puberty. She is interested in social ecology and the role of neighborhood attributes in influencing health trajectory. Specifically, she has studied the intersection of community violence, intimate partner violence, and child abuse and neglect and neighborhood characteristics that influence these patterns. Her current work is developing community-based strategies to promote child well-being and reduce child maltreatment in three Boston neighborhoods.

Richard Saitz, MD, MPH

Richard Saitz MD, MPH, is a general internist and primary care physician, an addiction medicine specialist, Chair and Professor of Community Health Sciences at BU School of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine at BU School of Medicine. Dr. Saitz is associate editor of  Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and Senior Editor of Journal of Addiction Medicine, Section Editor and sole author of key chapters in UpToDate on unhealthy substance use, and author of over two hundred peer-reviewed publications. His primary areas of expertise are screening and brief intervention, integrating substance-related and general health care, and improving the quality of care for people with unhealthy substance use. 

Roberta White, PhD

Roberta F. White is a trans-disciplinary scientist whose research focuses on the effects of exposure to industrial pollutants on brain function. Initially trained as a clinical psychologist/ neuropsychologist, her work employs cognitive and behavioral test measures and neuroimaging techniques to identify pollutant effects on the central nervous system. Combining the fields of public health, behavioral neuroscience, and epidemiology as well as clinical neuropsychology,  Dr. White has explored the effects of occupational lead and solvent exposures on cognitive and affective expressions of brain function; elucidated prenatal effects of exposure to methylmercury and polychlorinated biphenyls on cognitive function and neuropsychological outcomes; identified chemical exposures that are associated with the occurrence of Gulf War Illness (GWI), and uncovered cognitive and neuroimaging evidence of structural brain damage associated with GWI and sarin exposure in the veteran population.

Staff

Michael Winter, Statistical Programmer
Michael Winter is a Statistical Programmer working on the Cape Cod Health Study. He is Associate Director of Statistical Programming of the Biostatistics and Epidemiology Data Analytics Center (BEDAC) at the BU School of Public Health, and has over 30 years of experience in data management, statistical programming, and statistical analysis in public health research. He has served as senior statistical analyst and Associate Director of the Data Management and Statistics Core of the Youth Alcohol Prevention Center at BU School of Public Health. Mr. Winter has a long history of collaborating as a statistical analyst/data manager with Dr. Aschengrau.

Michael Bairos, Database Analyst

Mr. Michael Bairos is a Database Developer and Analyst for the Cape Cod Health Study. Mr. Bairos received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Northeastern University. He started working as a Research Database Analyst at Boston University’s Slone Epidemiology Center in 1999 and has been assisting Boston University investigators design complex computer databases for epidemiologic studies ever since. He is involved in web-based questionnaire design, data management, and implementing all the security features to maintain confidentiality of participant information for the Cape Cod Health Study.

Alexandra Grippo, Research Assistant

Alexandra Grippo is a research assistant working on the Cape Cod Health Study in the Department of Epidemiology at BU School of Public Health. She received her BS in Mathematics and MS in Epidemiology from the University at Buffalo. Her previous research experience centered around environmental epidemiology, including outdoor air pollution and pregnancy outcomes as well as indoor air pollution and early childhood development. She enjoys environmental research and plans to continue down this path in the future.

Rain Freeman, Maternal & Child Health Research Fellow

Rain Freeman is a second-semester MPH student at Boston University School of Public Health in the Design & Conduct of Public Health Research certificate program. Through BU’s Maternal & Child Health Center of Excellence, she is a 2018 research fellow with the Cape Cod Health Study. When she’s not a research fellow, or in class, she is working on her practicum at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Emergency Medicine Network. She hopes to pursue a career in health research, where she can further explore the connections between trauma, early childhood adversity, and lifelong health outcomes.