Epidemiology
» Epidemiology » Research & Service » Columbia Mailman School’s Epidemiological Research Studies the Impacts of Combat-Related Trauma and Large-Scale Attacks Across the Lifecourse
Columbia Mailman School’s Epidemiological Research Studies the Impacts of Combat-Related Trauma and Large-Scale Attacks Across the Lifecourse
How do the traumas of combat impact the mental health and general health of soldiers and former soldiers over the course of their lives? What does population health look like in the wake of a terrorist attack—as in lower Manhattan, or in the wake of multiple attacks—among Israelis and Palestinians? What are the social, genetic and environmental determinants that lead to PTSD and what are the determinants of having the resilience to escape or recover from it? These are some of the questions being explored by the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, chaired by Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH. The epidemiology of PTSD is a major focus of the department's psychiatric/neuro group. The Department also houses Columbia’s arm of the National Center for Disaster Mental Health Research, a collaboration of four academic institutions: Columbia, Dartmouth, Yale, and the Medical University of South Carolina. The NCDMHR is funded by a National Institutes of Health center grant that establishes an infrastructure to allow the rapid assessments of the health consequences of large-scale disasters in the U.S.
Ongoing research initiatives include studying the factors, both combat-related and non-combat-related, across the lifecourse that influence mental health and functioning in these groups here in the U.S and globally. Several projects in the Department of Epidemiology focus on the factors across the lifecourse that intersect with military experience to influence the mental health of soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This work builds on faculty members' long-standing department expertise in work with military populations, starting with the Vietnam War.
Other specific research studies include assessing the interrelations of psychological well-being and healthcare access in a post-conflict country (Liberia), the mental health and well-being of populations in the context of multiple terrorist attacks (Palestinians and Israelis), and a longitudinal assessment of the relation among exposure to traumatic events, adult mental health, and child development (Ethiopia).
