Center Expertise and Affiliation: Population Health, CDP Awardee and Associate member
Dr. Simmering’s research interests are in the use of large administrative data sets, such as health insurance claims, with measures of environmental exposure to understand the interplay between health and the environment. Specifically, he is interested in meteorological exposures (temperature, rainfall, amount of UV light) and atmospheric pollution (especially particulate matter) and how these measures affect respiratory health, especially incidence of pneumonia, influenza, and other infections. His expertise is in combing large databases with detailed exposure summaries, such as automatic records from weather stations, to construct large, geographically and climatologically diverse cohorts, to answer these questions.