Seminar Series: Dr. Mabel Carabali

Inequalities on Infectious Diseases: Measuring what we want, not what we can

Mabel Carabali 

Assistant Professor, Epidemiology
Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) on Methods to Address Inequalities
Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health
School of Population and Global Health
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
McGill University

Short Biography:
Dr. Mabel Carabali (she/her) is a distinguished epidemiologist, medical professional and Assistant Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University's School of Population and Global Health. Dr. Carabali holds the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Methods to Address Health Inequalities. She obtained her medical degree from Colombia's Universidad Libre and holds a PhD in Epidemiology from McGill University. With over 17 years of experience in international research, her expertise lies in infectious diseases and social epidemiology. Her current work focuses on assessing underreporting and misclassification in epidemiological studies, expanding statistical methods for intersectionality studies, and investigating health disparities.

Abstract:
Health inequalities are a major growing public health issue. To understand, accurately measure, and resolve health inequalities, it is essential and imperative to 1) prioritize rigorous documentation of data available; 2) use appropriate robust epidemiological methods to estimate their magnitude and 3) identify opportunities for sustainable interventions that help to eliminate the identified inequities. For any health outcome, and especially in infectious diseases, the presence of underreporting (e.g., undercounting of health outcomes) and measurement error (e.g., misclassification of cases and non-cases) are methodological challenges threatening the ability to address inequalities. The estimation of health disparities ignoring these challenges result in skewed versions of differences across populations or miss-estimation of the inequalities (e.g., spurious risk-associations across populations).
In this talk I will share results from different research venues, which converge on methodological approaches, throughout the entire data cycle, aimed at integrating the study of social public health issues with innovative epidemiological and statistical methods to address overlooked biases in the analysis of inequalities.

Area of Research:
Epidemiologic Methods, Social Epidemiology, Infectious Diseases, Surveillance Data, Data Synthesis, Global Health

Learn more about Dr. Mabel Carabali

Date: Friday, October 24
Time: 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Location: PHFM 3015 (Western Centre for Public Health and Family Medicine) or Zoom (request link by email    epibio@uwo.ca)