Marcia Polansky received a Master's degree in Health Policy and Management and a Doctoral degree in Biostatistics from Harvard School of Public Health. She received a Masters in Social work from Rutgers University. Dr. Polansky is the principal investigator of the statistical core for the comprehensive sickle cell center of St. Christophers Hospital for Children. Her research in the area of sickle cell disease includes the effect of pain due to Sickle Cell disease on the mother and child relationship. This research group is also doing a needs assessment to determine the medical and social services that are needed for the children and their families. A related research interest is the effect of drug addiction on the relationship of the mother and child and the child's development and interventions for improving the mother's parenting skills. Another area in which Dr. Polansky is studying the psychosocial aspects of chronic disease is for Alzheimers disease. She and her collaborators are developing attachment theory based work-shop/support groups to help families with caring for family members with Alzheimers disease. She has also worked for many years in the area of asthma. She has done epidemiological studies of psychosocial risk factors for hospitalization and mortality due to asthma. Currently, Dr. Polansky also assisted in the design and will do the statistical analyses for a health education study for patients admitted into the hospital for severe exacerbations of asthma. Dr. Polansky also does methodological research in developing statistical methods. She and her collaborators have applied mixture distribution theory to developing a method for assessing the agreement and reliability of diagnostic determinations among experts.
She coordinates and is one of the facilitators for the epidemiological course for the full-time and part-time Masters in Public Health students. She also chairs community-based masters projects for students whose focus is epidemiology and biostatistics.
Research Interests: Asthma; sickle cell disease; violence prevention in adolescents; parenting groups; attachment theory based interventions; drug addiction; accuracy of radiological diagnoses.
:: Curriculum Vitae (PDF)
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