Editorial Board
Editor‑in‑Chief
Professor Kim McGrail
Associate Dean of Research, School of Medicine
(on sabbatical)
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Editor‑in‑Chief
Dr Emma Gordon
Economic & Social Research Council and Administrative Data Research UK, UK
Deputy Editor‑in‑Chief
Scott Emerson
BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, Providence Health Care, Canada
IPDLN Section Editors
Associate Professor Tom Emery
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Executive Director of ODISSEI
Editors
Dr Bethania Almeida
Centro de Integração de Dados e Conhecimentos para Saúde - CIDACS/FIOCRUZ Bahia, Brazil
Associate Professor Nadine Andrew
Monash University, Australia
Dr Marcos Barreto
Department of Statistics, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Professor Peter Christen
Australian National University, Australia
Dr Laura Cowley
Population Data Science, School of Medicine, Swansea University
Professor Gabrielle Davie
University of Otago, New Zealand
Associate Professor Oliver Davis
MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, Department of Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School
Professor Amanda de Moura Souza
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, UFRJ, Brazil
Dr Michael Di Donato
Monash University, Australia
Professor Mark Elliot
University of Manchester, UK
Associate Professor Michael Falster
University of New South Wales, Australia
Professor Abraham Flaxman
University of Washington, USA
Dr Joanna Gong
Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Australia
Dr Louise Mc Grath-Lone
University College London, UK
Saba Jalali
University of British Columbia, Canada
Matthew Jay
UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, UK
Dr Derrick Lopez
The University of Western Australia, Australia
Dr Yang Lu
Loughborough University, UK
Professor Stefano Mazzuco
Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Padova, Italy
Zaid Mkangwa
East African Community (EAC) and East African Health Research Commission, Tanzania
Dr Amy Hawn Nelson
Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP), University of Pennsylvania, USA
Dr Ramesh Poluru
The INCLEN Trust International, New Delhi, India
Editorial Ambassadors
Dr Liz Ford
Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK
Professor William Ghali
University of Calgary, Canada
Professor Milton Kotelchuck
Harvard Medical School, USA
Professor Sallie Pearson
University of New South Wales, Australia
Professor David Preen
University of Western Australia, Australia
Professor Rainer Schnell
University Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Dr Merran Smith
Population Health Research Network, Australia
Dr Mark J Taylor
Melbourne Law School, Australia
Professor Michael Schull
Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Canada
Professor Henrik Toft Sørensen
Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark
Editor Role
- Work directly with authors, managing manuscripts through the process, and making a final editorial decision to accept or decline for publishing
- Identify suitable peer reviewers and manage the peer review process
- Dealing with author complaints if they arise
- Attend Editorial Board Meetings at least once a year (all meetings are held online)
- Submit own manuscripts to IJPDS including writing editorials and other contributions
- Promote the journal to their own institutions and contacts, acting as ambassadors for IJPDS
- Advise on journal scope and direction
- Advise on journal policy to ensure the fair, ethical and timely processing of submissions
- Promote high quality in journal outputs
- Identify topics for Special Issues and commissioned manuscripts
Editorial Ambassador Role
- Advise on journal scope and direction
- Advise on journal policy to ensure the fair, ethical and timely processing of submissions
- Promote high quality in journal outputs
- Identify topics for Special Issues and commissioned manuscripts
- Write editorials and submit other contributions to IJPDS
- Act as ambassadors for the journal to encourage new submissions, attract peer reviewers, and extend the reach of IJPDS readership internationally
- Regularly promote the journal to their own institutions and contacts
IPDLN Section Editor Role
- Oversee all abstract submissions for the IPDLN bi-annual conference
- Manage the peer review, acceptance and rejection process for IPDLN abstract submissions
- IPDLN Section Editors may take on the role of manuscript editor on a regular or occasional basis
Membership
The Board consists of at 29 members including the Founding Editor-in-Chief, two Editor’s-in-Chief, and Deputy Editor-in-Chief. Membership is designed to be indicative of the breadth of disciplines in scope for contributions to the IJPDS and provide appropriate international representation. At least one member will be drawn from the leadership of the International Population Data Linkage Network (IPDLN), from where the inspiration for the creation of this journal came. This will include the Director(s) who may also sub-edit a regular section for topics of particular interest to the network.
Members will serve for an initial term of three years, which can thereafter be renewed. Membership is on a voluntary basis. Nominations for membership can be made by the existing Board, by members of the IPDLN, and by contributors to the IJPDS. Nominations will be received and considered by the Editorial Board and will be confirmed by consensus.
Members are responsible for: declaring any potential conflicts of interest before reviewing submitted manuscripts; complying with relevant privacy legislation with respect to personal details made available to them as a member of the Editorial Board; and, abiding by any stated or implied confidentiality connected with submissions or that attaches to the work of the Editorial Board during and after term of membership.
Meetings
The Editorial Board meets online to accommodate for the various time zones, and as required to fulfil the terms of reference (max. three times per year)
Terms of reference review
The terms of reference will be reviewed annually with the next review due in January 2025.
Professor Kerina Jones
Swansea University, UK
Founding Editor in Chief
Academic lead for Information Governance across the various Swansea University-based data intensive/linkage initiatives to ensure data protection and maximise data utility. Leading the active Innovative Governance working group of the Farr Institute: working collaboratively to advise and influence the developing data governance landscape to promote the safe reuse of data. Leading a research programme in IG, including work to inform cross-centre research and how emerging data types, such as genetic data, can be used in conjunction with structured micro-data. Strong interest in the development of innovative disease registers that incorporate patient reported data for combination with health data, notably, the UK MS Register. Regular advisor and invited speaker on data governance. Academic lead for Public Involvement and Engagement. Established a Consumer Panel for data linkage research. Leading public debates and engagement events on the use of anonymised data for research.
Professor Kim McGrail
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Editor-in-Chief (on sabbatical)
Kimberlyn McGrail is Associate Dean of Research in the School of Medicine at Simon Fraser University. She is Scientific Advisor for Population Data BC, Scientific Director / CEO of Health Data Research Network Canada, and co-founding Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS). Her research interests are in primary care, policy evaluation and all aspects of population data science.
She conducts research in collaboration with patients and the public, as well as with policy and decision makers. Kim was the 2009/10 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Associate in Health Care Policy and Practice, 2016 recipient of the Cortlandt JG Mackenzie Prize for Excellence in Teaching, and 2017 recipient of a UBC award for Excellence in Clinical or Applied Research. In 2019-2020, she participated as a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Task Force on AI4Health and from 2020-2022 was a member of the Expert Advisory Group for the pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy. She is currently a member of the Global Partnership for AI Data Governance Working Group, which includes members from more than 20 countries, and a member of a number of Canadian advisory groups related to health data and research. She holds a PhD in Health Care and Epidemiology from the University of British Columbia, and a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Michigan.
Professor William Ghali
University of Calgary, Canada
Editorial Ambassador
Dr. Ghali’s research program is in the general area of health services research and his work focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to evaluating and improving health system performance to produce better patient outcomes and improved system efficiency.
Dr. Ghali leads or co-leads four inter-related research and innovation initiatives: 1) The O’Brien Institute for Public Health 2) the Alberta Provincial Project for Outcome Assessment in Coronary Heart Disease (APPROACH); 2) the Ward of the 21st Century initiative (W21C); and 3) the International Methodology Consortium for Coded Health Information (IMECCHI), with strong linkages to the World Health Organization.
Dr. William Ghali is the Scientific Director of the O'Brien Institute for Public Health. He is also a Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary. Dr. Ghali recently completed two terms as a Canada Research Chair in Health Services Research, and has also been funded as a Senior Health Scholar by Alberta Innovates Health Solutions. Clinically, he is trained as a General Internist (MD [1990] - University of Calgary, FRCP(C) [1994] - Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario), and completed methodological training in health services research and epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health (MPH [1995]).
Michael Schull MSc, MD, FRCPC
Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Canada
Editor
Michael Schull is President, CEO and Senior Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, and Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on health service utilization, quality of care, health system integration and patient outcomes, and the evaluation of health policy. His studies use administrative health datasets and linkages with clinical data, and he works closely with health system decision and policy makers. Dr. Schull practices as an Emergency Medicine specialist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.
Professor Peter Christen
School of Computing, The Australian National University
Editor
Peter Christen is a Professor in the School of Computing at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. He graduated with a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Basel, Switzerland, in 1999. His research interests are in record linkage and data mining, with a focus on privacy and machine learning aspects of record linkage. He has published over 200 articles in these areas, including the two books "Data Matching" in 2012 and "Linking Sensitive Data" (co-authored with Thilina Ranbaduge and Rainer Schnell) in 2020.
Professor Mark Elliot
University of Manchester, UK
Editor
Mark Elliot has worked at the University of Manchester since 1996, where he currently holds a chair in data science. His research is focused on the topics of data privacy and anonymisation. He founded the international recognised Confidentiality and Privacy Research Group (CAPRI) in 2002, and has run numerous research projects within the CAPRI remit. He leads the UK Anonymisation Network and is one of the key international researchers in the field of Statistical Disclosure and has an extensive portfolio of research grants and publications in the field.
Professor Elliot has extensive experience in collaboration with non-academic partners, particularly with national statistical agencies (e.g. Office for National Statistics, US Bureau of the Census, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Statistics Singapore) where he has been a key influence on disclosure control methodology used in censuses and surveys and where the SUDA software, he developed in collaboration with colleagues in Computer Science at Manchester, is currently employed.
Aside from Privacy his research interests also include AI and Society and substantive social science topics under the broad heading of Psychological Sociology (including studies of fathering, personal relationships and social and political attitudes).
Dr Liz Ford
Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK
Editorial Ambassador
Elizabeth Ford is a Lecturer in Medical Research Methodology at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. She holds a BA(Hons) in Psychology with Physiology (Oxford) and an MRC-funded PhD in Clinical Health Psychology (Sussex). Her post-doc positions were in health psychology (Sussex), psychiatric epidemiology (Barts Medical School), and primary care epidemiology (BSMS). She has gained a reputation in using a range of methods to explore data quality in electronic patient record databases and other digital health data, as well as examining ethics and governance issues in the use of health big data. Her clinical interests are dementia, postnatal mental health and rheumatoid arthritis. In 2016 she was awarded funding from the Wellcome Trust to identify patients with initial indications of dementia in primary care, borrowing analysis techniques from astrophysics, and she was appointed to the first cohort of Future Leaders in Health Data Science at the Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research.
Website:
https://www.bsms.ac.uk/dr-elizabeth-ford
http://www.bsms.ac.uk/astrodem
Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-ford-5a989781/
Professor Milton Kotelchuck
Harvard Medical School, USA
Editorial Ambassador
Milton Kotelchuck PhD MPH is Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Senior Scientist in Maternal and Child Health (MCH) at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He received his PhD in Personality and Developmental Psychology and an MPH in MCH and Epidemiology from Harvard University. He has extensive experience evaluating public health programs and policies to improve birth outcomes and child health. His research examines the adequacy and content of prenatal and inter-conception care, racial disparities in birth outcomes, maternal morbidity, child health services, fatherhood/male health services, MCH Life course, and health data policy. Dr. Kotelchuck initiated the population-based Massachusetts Pregnancy to Early Life Longitudinal (PELL) data system; developed the widely-used Adequacy of Prenatal Care Utilization Index, and was the founding Editor of the Maternal and Child Health Journal. He e serves on numerous U.S. national committees to improve perinatal, child and women’s health and health services.
Professor Graeme Laurie
University of Edinburgh, UK
Editor
Graeme Laurie is Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in the School of Law in the University of Edinburgh. His research interests relate to all aspects of medical law and ethics, with a particular focus on health research regulation. He holds a Wellcome Senior Investigator Award in Medical Humanities (2014-2019), and is Founding Director of the JK Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law. He is a member of the Farr Institute, and former member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the British Medical Association Medical Ethics Committee (both 2009-2015).
Dr Christine O’Keefe
CSIRO, Australia
Editor
Christine is a Senior Principal Research Scientist in CSIRO Data61.
Christine's research focusses on methods to address the balance between allowing data access and use with protecting privacy and confidentiality of people and organisations represented in data. Her work was recognised with a Newton Turner Career Award 2010, awarded to exceptional senior scientists in CSIRO.
Christine has over 110 publications in refereed journals and conferences, across her fields of interest. Christine was awarded the 2000 Australian Mathematical Society Medal for distinguished research in the mathematical sciences and the 1996 Hall Medal of the Institute for Combinatorics and Applications for outstanding contributions to the field. In 2003 Christine was included on the National Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame Signature Quilt: A Patchwork of Empowerment.
Professor David Preen
University of Western Australia, Australia
Editorial Ambassador
Professor David Preen is the Chair in Public Health at the School of Population Health, The University of Western Australia (UWA). He was the Director of the UWA Centre for Health Services Research from 2006-2015 and holds honorary positions at the University of South Australia and the College of Medicine, Swansea University (UK). He has been involved with conducting public health and health services research using population-based linked data for almost 15 years to study areas including: i) cancer service delivery, ii) pharmaco-epidemiology, iii) chronic disease management, iv) morbidity of marginalised populations, and v) methodological advances using medical record linkage.
Professor Rainer Schnell
University Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Editorial Ambassador
Rainer Schnell holds the chair for Research Methodology in the Social Sciences at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He has been the Director of the Centre for Comparative Surveys at City, University of London 2015-2017. Rainer Schnell founded the German Record Linkage Center and was the founding editor of the journal Survey Research Methods. He is the author of books on Statistical Graphics (1994), Nonresponse (1997), Survey Methodology (2012), and Research Methodology (10th ed. 2013). His research focuses on nonsampling errors, applied sampling, census operations, and privacy preserving record linkage (PPRL). Most of his current work is dedicated to cryptographic hardening of Bloom Filter based PPRL.
Website:
www.methodenzentrum.de
Professor Henrik Toft Sørensen
Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark
Editorial Ambassador
Professor Henrik Toft Sørensen is Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Clinical Epidemiology at Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark. He is adjunct professor at Stanford University and Boston University. He is a physician and specialist in internal medicine and hepatology. He has trained at several major Danish hospitals and acted as a clinician until 2005.
Professor Sørensen has more than 25 years of experience in clinical and epidemiological research. His research covers, among other things, cancer epidemiology and the prognosis of major chronic diseases, including multimorbidity.
Professor Sørensen is a member of the Board of Directors of the Danish Council for Independent Research and Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Epidemiology.
Dr Mark J Taylor
Melbourne Law School, Australia
Editorial Ambassador
Associate Professor, Health Law and Regulation; Deputy Director, HeLEX@Melbourne, Melbourne Law School. Author of Genetic Data and the Law (CUP,2012) Mark’s research interests include the regulation of personal information with particular emphasis upon health data governance. Immediate past Chair of the Confidentiality Advisory Group (England and Wales), he has served as policy advisor to the Health Research Authority (England) and as a member of the drafting group for the OECD Recommendation on Health Data Governance. He is a member of the Ethics Advisory Group for Genomics England and an advisor to the Data Protection (GDPR) and International Health Data Sharing Forum (GA4GH).
Professor Sallie Pearson
University of New South Wales, Australia
Editorial Ambassador
Sallie is a pharmacoepidemiologist and leading authority in the conduct of population-based research using routinely collected data. She has led national and international studies leveraging ‘big health data’ to generate real-world evidence on the use, benefits and safety of prescribed medicines. Sallie is the Professor of Health Systems, School of Population Health and the Theme Principal for Health Systems Research, UNSW Faculty of Medicine and Health. She also directs the NHMRC Medicines Intelligence Centre of Research Excellence, a collaborative research program accelerating real-world evidence development for medicines policy decision makers. Sallie is a long-standing advocate for the safe and productive use of data to benefit the Australian community, and has published widely on maximising the value of data for decision making in health.
Website:
https://cbdrh.med.unsw.edu.au/
Dr Merran Smith
Population Health Research Network, Australia
Editorial Ambassador
Dr Merran Smith is the inaugural Chief Executive of the Population Health Research Network (PHRN), a national research infrastructure network established in 2009. PHRN supports the linkage of Australia’s population-based health and other human services data and provision of the linked data for approved research projects. It receives core funding from the Australian government, with additional support from state and territory government agencies and universities. The University of Western Australia (UWA) is lead agent for the PHRN. Merran who is based at UWA has a BSc, BA (Economics), MSc (Physiology) and PhD (Pathology) from the University of Melbourne. Her interests include development/management of data linkage infrastructure and health and health services research.
Website:
www.phrn.org.au
Dr Emma Gordon
Economic & Social Research Council and Administrative Data Research UK, UK
Deputy Editor-in-Chief
Dr Emma Gordon is the inaugural Director of the Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK) programme at the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), which has been running since 2018. Emma is responsible for setting the strategic direction for the programme and leads on the coordination of the partnership and engagement with senior stakeholders, to improve access and analysis of administrative data to inform policy decisions. Emma joined ADR UK from HM Treasury, where she led the team supporting government economists and social researchers across government. Prior to this, Emma was Head of Health Analysis at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and at the start of her career was a post-doctoral researcher on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Emma holds a degree in zoology from the University of Aberdeen, a PhD in bird flight kinematics from the University of Bristol and an MSc in physical activity, nutrition and public health from the University of Bristol. Emma also sits on the Executive Committee of the International Population Data Linkage Network (IPDLN).
Website:
www.adruk.org and www.ipdln.org
Professor Chris Dibben
Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research and Administrative Data Research UK, UK
IPDLN Section Editor
Professor Chris Dibben is Director of the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR), and is Chair of Geography at the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh. He is co-lead for the ADR Scotland partnership, and runs a team of researchers working on the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing Strategic Impact Programme, exploring data relating to health and wellbeing impacts of commuting, education, and Scotland’s New Towns. Chris is also a member of the ADR UK Leadership Committee.
Dr. Marcos Barreto
Department of Statistics, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Editor
Marcos is an Associate Professor in Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Databases, and Big Data in the Department of Statistics at LSE. He holds a PhD in Computer Science (emphasis on high-performance computing) from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (2010, UFRGS, Brazil) and a postgraduate certificate in Health Data Science (2018, UCL Institute of Health Informatics, UK), where he was also a postdoctoral fellow funded by The Royal Society (2016-2018). His research concentrates mostly on data linkage tools and computational analytical models applied to massive databases. He led the design of AtyImo and contributed to CIDACS-RL, two mixed (deterministic and probabilistic) data linkage tools used for the design of the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort and other population-based cohorts at CIDACS (Salvador, Brazil), where he is also an associate researcher.
Dennis Culhane
Dana and Andrew Stone Professor of Social Policy at the School of Social Policy and Practice at The University of Pennsylvania
Section Editor
Dennis Culhane is the Dana and Andrew Stone Professor of Social Policy at the School of Social Policy and Practice at The University of Pennsylvania. Culhane is a nationally recognized social science researcher with primary expertise in the field of homelessness. From July 2009 – June 2018 he served as Director of Research at the National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is a leader in the integration of administrative data for research and directs Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP), an initiative that promotes the development of integrated data systems by state and local governments for policy analysis and systems reform.
His homelessness work has positioned him as an early innovator in the use of administrative data for research and policy analysis, particularly for populations and program impacts that are difficult to assess and track. Culhane’s work has resulted in federal legislation requiring all cities and states to develop administrative data systems for tracking homeless services in order to receive HUD funding. His work has also been instrumental in a national shift in how cities address chronic homelessness and family homelessness. Culhane’s current research utilizes linked administrative data to better understand and respond to the emerging crisis of aging homelessness, and was featured in the New York Times Magazine article, “Elderly and Homeless: America’s Next Housing Crisis.”
Abel Kho
Internist and Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Section Editor
Dr. Kho is an Internist and Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine in the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine where he is the Founding Director of the Center for Health Information Partnerships (2015) and the Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine (2020). His research focuses on developing regional Electronic Health Record (EHR) enabled data sharing platforms for a range of health applications including high throughput phenotyping, cohort discovery, estimating population level disease burden, and quality improvement. He has served as Principal Investigator for over $80M in external funding, published over 100 manuscripts, and mentored numerous students and trainees. He is an internationally recognized expert in privacy preserving record linkage, having published the first large scale real-world application of this method for which he was assigned a patent, and co-founded a startup which was subsequently acquired by Datavant. He is an elected Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and recipient of the Donald A.B. Lindbergh Award for Innovation in Informatics.
Website:
Faculty Profile
Nadine Andrew
Associate Professor, Monash University, Australia
Editor
Nadine Andrew is an Associate Professor at Monash University and Research Data Lead for the National Centre for Healthy Ageing. She has a Master of Public Health and PhD in epidemiology. Her research focus is generating and translating knowledge in the application of population-based routinely collected linked data to health services research with a focus on chronic diseases of ageing such as stroke and dementia. Nadine is leading the design and implementation of the National Centre for Healthy Ageing electronic health record derived Data Platform that underpins the Centre’s research and translational activities. She also chairs the Monash University HELIX data linkage committee and is an invited member of a number of national organisations including the ARC Medical Research Advisory Group and Stroke Foundation Research Advisory Group.
Research Professor
University of Otago, New Zealand
Editor
Gabrielle is an applied biostatistician who provides critical input across all stages of health research, specialising in projects using routinely collected data. Collaborating within multidisciplinary teams, she explores health disparities and inequities among New Zealanders while also undertaking methodological research on data quality. She has co-authored more than 100 publications on injury, and led research on diabetes-related fracture risk and the financial impact of injury in older workers. Gabrielle is an integral member of the rural health research team that developed the Geographical Classification for Health, now widely used by academics and government agencies. Most of her work is funded by the Health Research Council; current HRC-funded projects include evaluating the impact of rurality on health outcomes and healthcare delivery, a national falls prevention pathway and the economic impact of cancer on individuals. Gabrielle is Director of Research for her Department and an Editor for the International Journal of Population Data Science.
Websites:
https://www.otago.ac.nz/healthsciences/expertise/Profile/?id=792
Scott Emerson
BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, Providence Health Care, Canada
Deputy Editor‑in‑Chief
Scott Emerson is Senior Epidemiologist within the Epidemiology and Population Program of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, Providence Health Care – St Paul's Hospital (Vancouver, Canada). His role supports capacity-building, educational, and quality assurance initiatives - providing guidance to scientists, technical staff, and students on meaningfully leveraging administrative record linkages; he leads an internal monthly seminar series on associated methodologic, conceptual, and technical issues. He is also a consultant with the University of British Columbia (UBC), providing writing and analytic support for administrative record linkage projects. He has held healthcare and analytic related roles for over 10 years. Previously, Scott was an Epidemiologist at ICES (the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences) in Toronto, within the Populations & Public Health and Primary Care & Health Systems Programs. He holds an MSc in epidemiology (population and public health) from UBC, funded by a Tri-Agency Canada Graduate Scholarship. His thesis examined validity of a quality of life measure; an associated publication received an 'Articles of the Year' award by the International Society for Quality of Life Research.
Website:
scottdemerson.ca
Dr Louise Mc Grath-Lone
University College London, UK
Editor
Louise Mc Grath-Lone is a Senior Research Fellow at University College London. Her research lies at the interface of public health and social policy: it focuses on exploring outcomes for groups that are vulnerable to social adversity with the aim of informing policy and practice related to public services. Her expertise lies in leveraging administrative data from health, education and social care to describe and evaluate complex services and interventions. She has a special interest in children and young people, particularly those who are in contact with social care services. Louise holds a BSc(Hons) in Microbiology (University College Cork), a Master’s in Public Health (Imperial College London) and a PhD in Population Health (University College London).
Dr Derrick Lopez
The University of Western Australia, Australia
Editor
Derrick Lopez is a research data specialist with interests in cardiovascular epidemiology, health services research, pharmacoepidemiology, ageing and frailty, and rural health. He has hands-on experience working on large person-level linked health datasets relating to patient use of medical services like hospital admissions, emergency department presentations, mortality, cancer, pharmacy dispensing, and medical benefits scheme. He continues to build his expertise through involvement with data-intensive research projects within the Cardiovascular Research Group and Centre for Health Services Research at The University of Western Australia (UWA), and through collaborations with the Medicines Intelligence Centre for Research Excellence and National Stroke Data Linkage Interest Group. He supervises students on their research projects and is involved in teaching linked health data courses at UWA.
Stefano Mazzuco
University of Padova
Editor
Stefano Mazzuco is a Full professor of Demography at the Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Padova. He has been part of the scientific committee of Italian Association for Population Studies and member of several population studies scoieties (EAPS, PAA, IUSSP). He collaborated with WHO and Marmot Review in the field of health inequality and its costs and now he is involved in research projects related on mortality dynamics, demographic forecasting, causes of death (a new research project - CARONTE - is starting on September 2023). His research is characterized by a mainly quantitative approach (e.g. lately functional data analysis and compositional data analysis) used to correctly identify the demographic dynamics. He also recently addressed the mortality crisis due to Covid-19 outbreak.
Zaid Mkangwa
East African Community (EAC) and East African Health Research Commission, Tanzania
Editor
Zaid Mkangwa is the information systems officer, Web and Managing Journal Editor at the East African Community (EAC). He has technical and analytical skills, with over 5 years of experience as a managing editor and web content editor in a journal editorial management system. Also, He has a broad knowledge of Information systems, data management, and public health for over 7 years of working with universities, corporate companies, and international organizations including Code for Africa which comprises six countries from Southern, Eastern and Western Africa (as a Data technologist), and East African Community (information systems officer) and Yemen University of Science and Technology from the Middle East (as a Journal administrator). Moreover, He has been coordinating health data harmonization, data use activity and capacity building from each Ministry of Health in East African countries, capacity building for Young Research Scientists on grants, data use and repository management, organizing and coordinating EAC health scientific conference.
Website:
https://www.eahealth.org/
Health Scientific Journals:
eahrj.eahealth.org
easci.eahealth.org
Dr Ramesh Poluru
The INCLEN Trust International, New Delhi, India
Editor
Ramesh Poluru did his Masters and PhD in Population Studies from Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, India. His interests and expertise spans across demography, statistics, epidemiology, vaccine safety, impact assessment, public health and surveillance (reproductive and child health, STIs, HIV/AIDS). Dr Poluru has more than two decades of experience in conceptualization, implementation and monitoring of large scale socioeconomic, demographic, behavioral, biological and operations research studies; analysis and interpretation of data (primary and secondary), using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. He has also extensively involved in the facility, community-based studies, action/operations research, phase-3 & 4 clinical trials, to deliver intervention services among general population (women and children) to more vulnerable populations (infants, minority population, high-risk groups-sex workers, MSM, IDU and truckers). Dr Poluru has published about 40 research papers in peer-reviewed journals/chapters, and co-authored technical reports of national and international research projects. He has served and continues to serve as a scientific reviewer for over forty journals and various international granting agencies for research proposals (grants & fellowships), reports, and participate in panel meetings.
Amy Hawn Nelson, PhD
Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP), University of Pennsylvania
Editor
Amy Hawn Nelson, PhD, is Research Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and the Director of Training and Technical Assistance for AISP. Her primary role is to support IDS field building, which includes working with sites across the US to develop shared, purpose-driven data infrastructure that centers strong data governance. She has provided in-depth Technical Assistance in support of cross-sector data integration to 30+ sites across the US, including the development of 100+ data sharing agreements, and serving as an investigator on 25+ studies using integrated data to evaluate program and policy outcomes. Dr. Hawn Nelson is a community engaged researcher and has presented and written extensively on data integration and intersectional topics related to educational equity.
Webpage:
Profile
Tom Emery
Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP), University of Pennsylvania
IPDLN Section Editor
I am Associate Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Executive Director of ODISSEI, the Dutch National Infrastructure for Social Science, where I am responsible for the strategic development of the infrastructure and international collaborations. I am the Social Science Lead for the Pandemic and Disaster Preparedness Center and, for 2025-26, I am co-Director of the IPDLN. I’m deeply passionate about improving social science data and the infrastructure that is needed for its collection, processing and dissemination.
Bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/drtomemery.bsky.social
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-emery-0a179010/
Webpage:
https://tomemery.eu/
Dr Bethania Almeida
Centro de Integração de Dados e Conhecimentos para Saúde - CIDACS/FIOCRUZ Bahia, Brazil
Editor
Dr Bethania Almeida is a civil servant at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), researcher and vice coordinator at the Centre for Data and Knowledge Integration for Health (CIDACS/FIOCRUZ Bahia, Brazil). Bethania worked with NGOs in the areas of habitation, education and health. Her interest in the area of health motivated her to work at the FIOCRUZ, an institution affiliated with the Brazilian Ministry of Health whose institutional actions are designed to generate and disseminate scientific and technological knowledge in order to strengthen the Brazilian Universal Health System (SUS). In 2017 she started to work at The Centre for Data and Knowledge Integration for Health (CIDACS) linked to FIOCRUZ. She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in social science and a PhD in public health from the Federal University of Bahia with a training period at the Science Policy Research Unit (University of Sussex).
Her main areas of interest include Data Governance for Public Health Research; Interdisciplinary Research on Social and Environmental Determinants of Health; Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects related to Population Data Science, Human Genomics and Open Science.
Webpage:
https://cidacs.bahia.fiocruz.br/
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethânia-almeida-a918b115
Professor Amanda de Moura Souza
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, UFRJ, Brazil
Editor
Amanda de Moura Souza, RD, PhD, is an Adjunct Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Her research trajectory has been in the field of nutritional epidemiology, focusing on investigating the association between food consumption and Non-Communicable Diseases. She also has a special interest in household and school-based surveys, health information systems, and probabilistic record linkage.
Bluesky:
@amandamoura.bsky.social
Dr Michael Di Donato
Monash University, Australia
Editor
Dr Michael Di Donato is a Research Fellow in the Healthy Working Lives Research Group at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University. Michael is a health services researcher whose work focuses on the health and social outcomes of injured workers, particularly those with low back pain.
Michael leads major data-driven projects. During his doctoral studies, he co-led the development of a multi-jurisdiction workers' compensation claims and services dataset. In Michael's postdoctoral fellowship for the Australia and New Zealand Low Back Pain Research Network (ANZBACK), Michael led a multi-institution project examining the impact of policy changes on medicines used by Australian workers with musculoskeletal disorders.
Michael regularly engages with State and Commonwealth Government authorities to deliver novel quantitative insights about the health and recovery of injured Australian workers, and is a member of the Work Disability Prevention and Integration Executive Committee.
LinkedIn:
https://au.linkedin.com/in/michael-di-donato-health
Associate Professor Michael Falster
University of New South Wales, Australia
Editor
Michael Falster is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director of Research at the School of Population Health UNSW. He holds a PhD in epidemiology and a Masters of Biostatistics. Michael leads the Cardiometabolic Medicines team in the Medicines Intelligence Research Program, using population data and advanced (pharmaco)epidemiologic methods to investigate variation in quality, use and outcomes of care. His career has spanned both research and policy settings. He has extensive experience partnering with policymakers using linked population data, including designing performance monitoring frameworks and evaluating new models of care.
Professor Abraham Flaxman
University of Washington, USA
Editor
Abraham Flaxman, PhD, is a Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. He is currently leading the development of a simulation platform to derive “what-if” results from Global Burden of Disease estimates and is engaged in methodological and operational research on verbal autopsy. Dr. Flaxman has previously designed software tools such as DisMod-MR that IHME uses to estimate the Global Burden of Disease, and the Bednet Stock-and-Flow Model, which has produced estimates of insecticide-treated net coverage in sub-Saharan Africa.
Webpage:
https://healthyalgorithms.com/
Dr Joanna Gong
Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Australia
Editor
Joanna Gong is an endocrinologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Western Health in Australia, adjunct lecturer at Monash University, and is on the University of Melbourne Medical School Early and Mid Career Academics Advisory Committee. She is also a PhD candidate at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute and is on the Baker Institute Research Quality and Safety Committee. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. It draws on a range of data sources, including large-scale multinational datasets and national administrative data such as the Australian Census. This research generates evidence that informs ongoing conversations around clinical practice and health policy. Her work spans both public health and hospital-based settings, with an emphasis on supporting more effective and equitable approaches to prevention and care.
Saba Jalali
University of British Columbia, Canada
Editor
Saba is a PhD Candidate in Human Nutrition at the University of British Columbia, Canada, with over a decade of experience in nutrition research and education. She investigates how dietary patterns influence cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality using Canadian nutrition survey data linked to health administrative records. Her work integrates advanced causal inference methods and machine learning techniques to generate robust evidence that can inform dietary guidelines and public health policy. She also contributes to the scientific community through peer review and editorial activities.
Matthew Jay
UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, UK
Editor
Matt is a Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, where he leads the UCL Legal Epidemiology Group, using linked administrative data to research the health of families before, during and after family court. He has expertise in all-of-England family court, health, education and social care data. He has served as Senior Data Scientist for the ECHILD project where he created the ECHILD How To Guides and Phenotype Code List Repository. Outside of epidemiology and data, Matt has a keen interest in the active use and teaching of ancient languages, particularly Latin, and post-classical Latin literature.
Dr Yang Lu
Loughborough University, UK
Editor
Yang Lu is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Loughborough University. Her research focuses on trustworthy data governance, privacy, and artificial intelligence, with expertise in privacy-preserving data integration and record linkage, semantic governance frameworks, synthetic data governance, and trust, identity, and privacy in distributed systems. Dr. Lu also works on ethical AI and human-in-the-loop approaches to support transparent, policy-aligned use of population-scale health and administrative data. Her work combines technical innovation with policy insight, and she collaborates with partners including the Alan Turing Institute, Energy Systems Catapult, and the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yang-lu-684156a7/
University Profile:
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/compsci/staff/yang-lu/
Oliver Davis, Associate Professor of Biomedical Data Science
MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, Department of Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School
Editor
Oliver Davis is Associate Professor of Biomedical Data Science at Bristol Medical School and the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol, and a former Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. He has twenty years’ experience of working with birth cohorts and expertise in large-scale genomic and digital footprint data, including the development of novel approaches and software for data linkage, analysis, visualisation and sharing. He has a particular interest in public involvement in data intensive research, and in approaches that keep humans in the loop with complex and large-scale analyses.
Bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/droliverdavis.bsky.social
Webpage:
https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/oliver-s-davis
Laura Cowley, Senior Research Officer and Data Scientist
Population Data Science, School of Medicine, Swansea University
Editor
Dr Laura Cowley is a Senior Research Officer and Data Scientist based in the Population Data Science Department at the School of Medicine, Swansea University. Laura is involved in several data linkage projects in the field of children’s health and social care. She is currently undertaking a Social Care Fellowship examining risk factors for care entry and placement instability amongst children in Wales. In addition, Laura is a co-investigator on the ESRC-funded COMFT (Child Outcomes for Mothers Facing Trial) study examining outcomes for children of incarcerated mothers using linked Ministry of Justice and social care data, and a co-investigator on the Horizon Europe-funded SERENA project examining pathways through services for children who have experienced maltreatment. Laura was recently awarded a place on the prestigious Welsh Crucible development programme for the future leaders of interdisciplinary research in Wales.
Webpage:
https://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/l.e.cowley/