2022 Elizabeth L. Scott Award
Madhu Mazumdar
Mount Sinai
For serving as an outstanding role model of leadership and creating new leadership opportunities for statisticians; fostering opportunities in statistics and promoting statistical careers for diverse trainees; dedication to training and mentoring the next generation of statistical leaders; and excellence in team science research.
Dr. Mazumdar will deliver the E.L. Scott Lecture at the 2022 Joint Statistical Meetings in Washington DC titled "Biostatistical Methods and Team Science: Generating Evidence for Optimization of Clinical Practice".
Abstract
Medical knowledge is increasing at an exponential rate, reshaping the health care environment with a steady stream of diagnostic and therapeutic innovations. This has led to substantial improvements in health outcomes but is also associated with a concerning rate of medical error, inefficiency, and variations in practice patterns. Addressing these problems will require health care delivery systems characterized by continuous learning and improvement, in which science, informatics, incentives, and culture are aligned. Efforts to create such a system include: (i) catalyzing health care delivery research; (ii) adding evaluation components to quality improvement initiatives; (iii) increasing use of electronic health record system (EHR) data for research and data-sharing; and (iv) including front-line clinicians in this research agenda. I’ll present two challenges facing US healthcare: 1) how to choose patients for knee-replacement surgery who will benefit most in terms of their quality of life and what is the cost-effectiveness of this procedure? and 2) how to improve quality of cancer care through modelling of incurred cost? I’ll highlight how biostatistical methods play a crucial role in answering these questions and illustrate how collaborations guided with principles of team science provides opportunity for practicing leadership, embracing diversity, managing conflict, and sharing credit.
Biography of Dr. Mazumdar
Dr. Madhu Mazumdar is a Professor of Biostatistics at the Center of Biostatistics, Department of Population Health Science and Policy and the Director of the Institute for Healthcare Delivery Science at Mount Sinai’s School of Medicine in New York City. She is also the Director of the Biostatistics Core for the Tisch Cancer Institute. In these roles, she helped obtain National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation for the cancer center and multiple grants from National Institute for Aging (NIA) for translational research in geriatric palliative care and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. She was born in India and received her master’s degree in statistics from the University of Delhi. She came to the United States to further her education and received her MS in Mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh, her PhD in statistics from Penn State, and training in leadership from Drexel University through the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) fellowship.
Prior to joining Mount Sinai in 2014, Dr. Mazumdar committed a decade of her career to Weill Cornell Medical College where she was a professor of biostatistics and the founding chief of the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in the Department of Public Health. She reformed the Biostatistics Core from General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) by integrating biostatisticians across five institutions and by optimizing the process of matching requests for consultation with expertise and availability. This highly productive core aided in obtaining the clinical and translational science center award and Dr. Mazumdar served as the director of the Research Design and Biostatistics Core. Dr. Mazumdar also dedicated many years to cancer research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s Cancer Center (MSKCC) as the head of their Masters’ Biostatisticians Group. A major contribution at MSKCC was the development of International Cancer Collaborative Groups for reducing heterogeneity of treatment practices over different institutions. With biostatisticians in lead, these groups created single risk-adapted therapy model for predicting outcomes that were used by all participating institutions for guiding treatment and patient selection in clinical trials.
Dr. Mazumdar is committed to a team science approach and to developing and disseminating frameworks and best practices to further the field of biostatistics and the careers of her staff, mentees, and collaborators. Her work spans many health fields including orthopedics, oncology, geriatrics and palliative care, neurology, and anesthesiology. She is passionate about translating scientific evidence into clinical practice using digital medicine and electronic patient reported outcomes. Her collaborative work with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) group has been funded by NIH for creation of a Digital Transformation Network (DTN) that plans to reduce digital disparities and scientifically test the impact of these technologies in a clinical trial in three sites catering to diverse populations and communities. She is a methodologist at heart and specializes in pragmatic clinical trials, predictive analytics, machine learning, meta-analysis, diagnostic test evaluation, and complex sample surveys. Her collaborations in healthcare delivery research have utilized these methods to help change practices at Mount-Sinai hospital and beyond for reducing adverse events (delirium, malnutrition, falls) and for moving the drug formulary for pain-management towards evidence-based cost-effective plans.
Dr. Mazumdar has received accolades for her outstanding work in advancing the field of biostatistics and for her commitment to mentoring others. She received the American Statistical Association’s Fellow Award for achieving excellence in leading biostatistics collaborations, reforming biostatistics units, and mentoring quantitative scientists and clinical researchers. For her work in translating research discoveries into clinical practice, she received the Team Science Award, sponsored jointly by the American Federation of Medical Research, Association for Clinical Research Training, Association for Patient Oriented Research, and Society for Clinical and Translational Science.
Individualized mentorship is a cornerstone of Dr. Mazumdar’s career. She has personally mentored over one hundred professionals, seventy percent of which were women, eleven percent underrepresented minorities, and several LGBTQ. She has advised them on how to conduct the highest quality research, how to gracefully advance their careers, and how to balance work and life. Her leadership style motivates staff to be successful in designing and conducting impactful health science research and be mindful citizens.
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