Marcia Polansky, ScD, MS, MSW

Bio Abstract

Marcia Polansky received a Master's degree in Health Policy and Management from Harvard School and a Doctoral degree in Biostatistics from Harvard School of Public Health. She completed a Masters in Social Work from Rutgers University. Dr. Polansky’s research interests are in the areas of clinical trials methods and epidemiological research and evaluation of psycho-social interventions for chronic diseases. Dr. Polansky was the statistician for a study evaluating the integration of children with Cerebral Palsy in the community and is completing the statistical analysis for a study of family care giving for Alzheimer’s disease. Her evaluation work has included evaluating an extended day program for high risk youth and assistive technology and home modifications for independent living for seniors. 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 parenting skills. She has also been involved in research in the area of asthma including epidemiological studies of psychosocial risk factors for hospitalization and mortality due to asthma. Dr. Polansky and her collaborators have applied mixture distribution theory to developing a method for assessing the agreement and reliability of diagnostic determinations among experts and she is exploring other applications of mixture distribution methodology. She also has research interests in structural equation models and clinical trials methods.

Research Interests: program evaluation; clinical trials; asthma; violence prevention in adolescents; parenting groups; attachment theory based care giving interventions for chronic diseases; drug addiction; mixture distributions; structural equation modeling.