Editorial Board profiles

Guohua Li, MD, DrPH is the Finster Professor and the founding director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia University.  He received his medical degree from Beijing Medical University and his doctoral and post-doctoral training in injury epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. Dr Li is interested in population-based, injury-related, and policy-oriented studies that encompass innovative methodology and complex data systems.  He has published extensively in the field of injury epidemiology and prevention and is credited with developing the decomposition equation linking injury mortality to case fatality, incidence density and exposure prevalence, and the FIA Score for predicting fatality in aviation crashes.  He also made seminal contributions to the development of the multiphase approach to age-period-cohort modeling, a semi-parametric technique for estimating cohort effects in contingency table data. Dr Li is a Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of the Kenneth Rothman Epidemiology Prize and the John Paul Stapp Award from the Aerospace Medical Association.

Barbara Lang, MPH, is the administrative director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia University and the Managing Editor of Injury Epidemiology. Barbara has eleven years of research program support experience in the university setting, and has provided technical and editorial support for more than thirty peer-reviewed publications. In addition, Barbara has assisted with the editorial coordination of several academic texts, including Injury Research: Theories, Methods, and Approaches (2012) and The Handbook of Veterinary Anesthesia (2006).  Barbara received her Bachelor of Science degree from The Ohio State University and her Master of Public Health degree in Health Policy and Management from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Kathleen F. Carlson, MS, PhD is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Oregon Health & Science University-Portland State University School of Public Health, and a Core Investigator with the Health Services Research Center of Innovation at the VA Portland Health Care System. She completed her PhD in Environmental Health at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health focused on injury epidemiology and occupational injury prevention, and a postdoctoral fellowship in health services research with the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, focused on rehabilitation services for military veterans with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Dr. Carlson’s research examines the spectrum of injury prevention and control, from the epidemiology of intentional and unintentional injuries to the rehabilitation of patient populations with TBI and other combat injuries. Her current efforts focus on firearm-related injuries, opioid and other medication-related injuries, short- and long-term functional outcomes among combat veterans with TBI, and the epidemiology of, and health services for, auditory injury among active duty and separated military service members. Dr. Carlson co-directs the VA health services research post-doctoral fellowship program at the Portland VA and teaches/advises MPH and PhD students in epidemiology at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. She has served in a variety of leadership roles with the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research (SAVIR) and with the Injury Control and Emergency Health Services (ICEHS) section of the American Public Health Association.

Dr. Cassandra Crifasi is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Deputy Director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research. Her research interests focus broadly on public safety including injury epidemiology and prevention, gun violence prevention and policy, attitudes and behaviors of gun owners, and underground gun markets. Dr. Crifasi teaches courses in research and evaluation methods and serves as Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins-Baltimore Collaborative for Violence Reduction. She earned her PhD in Health Policy and Management from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an MPH in Environmental and Occupational Health from the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University.

Scientia Professor Rebecca Ivers is Head, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney, and Honorary Professorial Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health. Ivers leads a global research program focusing on the prevention and management of injury. Her work has a strong focus on equity, implementation, sustainability and capacity development. She has published over 300 peer reviewed publications and supervised 20 PhD students. 

Zachary Y. Kerr, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of North Carolina, and serves as Core Faculty with the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes, the Matthew Gfeller Traumatic Brain Injury Center, and the UNC Injury Prevention Research Center. His research focuses on the development and evaluation of injury prevention strategies in sport settings across the lifespan. Dr Kerr has collaborated with numerous injury prevention, athletic training, and sports medicine experts, resulting in the publication of over 200 research articles related to injury surveillance and traumatic sport-related injuries such as concussions and exertional heat stroke. Dr. Kerr was a previous recipient of the American College of Sport Medicine New Investigator Award and has served as chair of the Injury Control and Emergency Health Services section of the American Public Health Association.

Francisco Lopez-Valdes, PhD, CAISS, is Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Pontifical University Comillas Engineering School ICAI (Madrid, Spain). He received his engineering degree from the University of Valladolid (Spain) and his doctoral degree from the University of Virginia (USA). After his doctoral training, Dr. Lopez-Valdes was a recipient of a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship that allowed him to return to Europe to lead the establishment of the first injury biomechanics laboratory in Spain at the University of Zaragoza. He joined the faculty of University Pontifical Comillas in 2017, where he coordinates the Master’s Program in Engineering for Mobility and Safety. His research on the prevention of injuries is strongly focused on the investigation of injury mechanisms and injury thresholds. Dr. Lopez-Valdes is a member of the International Research Council on Biomechanics of Injury (IRCOBI), where he serves as the Secretary of the Board, and he is currently the President of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM).

Dr Lystad is a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences, Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia). Dr Lystad is an injury epidemiologist with a particular interest in sports injury, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, paediatric trauma, and combat sports. Dr Lystad's research is centred around conducting large population-based cohort studies using data linkages of administrative data collections to investigate health outcomes following injury and to guide improvements in health service delivery and health policy.

Dr Colleen Saunders (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer in Emergency Medicine at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She manages the Emergency Medicine research portfolio across a large number of faculty and four postgraduate programmes. She has a broad interest in research methodology education for clinicians and emergency care providers, research priority setting for low resource settings and research capacity building. She is a South African National Research Foundation rated researcher and her research interests broadly include the epidemiology of trauma, unintentional injuries and sports injuries, specifically musculoskeletal soft-tissue injuries. She has a long-standing interest in water safety and a specific research focus on drowning epidemiology and prevention in low resource settings, driven by engagement with local community stakeholders.

Gary A. Smith, MD, DrPH, is Professor of Pediatrics, Emergency Medicine, and Epidemiology at the Ohio State University. He holds the Dimon R. McFerson Endowed Chair in Injury Research and is founder and director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Smith is board certified in the specialties of pediatrics and general preventive medicine and public health, and in the subspecialty of pediatric emergency medicine. He received his MPH and DrPH degrees from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has been a contributor to the field of injury, especially through research that informs public policy, for more than 35 years. His research focuses on prevention of unintentional and intentional injuries among children and adolescents. He is founder and president of the Child Injury Prevention Alliance, a NGO that works globally to prevent child injury.