Scholars@Duke
Gina-Maria Pomann

Gina-Maria Pomann

Associate Professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics
Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, Division of Biostatistics
gina-maria.pomann@duke.edu
Duke Box 2721, Durham, NC 27710
2424 Erwin Road Ste 1105, 11039 Hock Plaza, Durham, NC 27705

Selected Publications

A Method for Teaching Biostatisticians to Write and Critique Specific Aims

Journal Article Journal of Curriculum and Teaching · October 26, 2024 This article describes the design of a single instructional module on writing and critiquing the Specific Aims (SA) section of a grant proposal for a biomedical research study. It begins by discussing the goals and learning objectives for the modul ... Full text Cite

A guide to successful management of collaborative partnerships in quantitative research: An illustration of the science of team science.

Journal Article Stat (Int Stat Inst) · June 2024 Data-intensive research continues to expand with the goal of improving healthcare delivery, clinical decision-making, and patient outcomes. Quantitative scientists, such as biostatisticians, epidemiologists, and informaticists, are tasked with turning data ... Full text Link to item Cite

Methods for building a staff workforce of quantitative scientists in academic health care.

Journal Article Stat (International Statistical Institute) · June 2024 Collaborative quantitative scientists, including biostatisticians, epidemiologists, bio-informaticists, and data-related professionals, play vital roles in research, from study design to data analysis and dissemination. It is imperative that academic healt ... Full text Cite

Working well with statisticians: Perceptions of practicing statisticians on their most successful collaborations

Journal Article Stat · June 1, 2024 Statistical collaboration requires statisticians to work and communicate effectively with nonstatisticians, which can be challenging for many reasons. To identify common themes and lessons for working smoothly with nonstatistician collaborators, two focus ... Full text Cite

Accelerating resident research within quantitative collaboration units in academic healthcare

Journal Article Stat · June 1, 2024 With increased access to biomedical and electronic health records data and the complexity of research questions, individuals in residency programmes who aim to conduct research require specialized educational programmes and biostatistics support. Biostatis ... Full text Cite

Biomedical Researchers Should be Taught Statistics Differently than Biostatisticians in Training: Illustration of a Module within a Clinical Research Seminar Course

Journal Article Journal of Curriculum and Teaching · May 1, 2024 The predominant model for biomedical research is team science. Two critical members of the team are the clinical investigator and the biostatistician. Typically, the biostatistician performs statistical analyses and the clinical investigator interprets the ... Full text Cite

A Curriculum Review of Programming Courses in a Master of Biostatistics Program

Journal Article Journal of Curriculum and Teaching · February 1, 2024 Computing is a core competency for collaborative biostatisticians, who work on interdisciplinary scientific teams in medicine and publich health. However, computing is a broad field that encompases many underlying pedagogical constructs and subspeciality t ... Full text Cite

Developing partnerships for academic data science consulting and collaboration units.

Journal Article Stat (Int Stat Inst) · 2024 Data science consulting and collaboration units (DSUs) are core infrastructure for research at universities. Activities span data management, study design, data analysis, data visualization, predictive modelling, preparing reports, manuscript writing and a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Peer review of clinical and translational research manuscripts: Perspectives from statistical collaborators.

Journal Article J Clin Transl Sci · 2024 Research articles in the clinical and translational science literature commonly use quantitative data to inform evaluation of interventions, learn about the etiology of disease, or develop methods for diagnostic testing or risk prediction of future events. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Treatment Effect Estimates From Pilot Trials Are Unreliable.

Journal Article J Pain Symptom Manage · December 2023 CONTEXT: The CONSORT guideline defines a pilot trial as a small-scale version of a desired future efficacy trial that is intended to answer the key questions of whether and how a larger study should be done. For example, a pilot trial might evaluate differ ... Full text Link to item Cite

Needles in a Haystack: Finding Qualitative and Quantitative Collaborators in Academic Medical Centers.

Journal Article Acad Med · August 1, 2023 Translational research is a data-driven process that involves transforming scientific laboratory- and clinic-based discoveries into products and activities with real-world impact to improve individual and population health. Successful execution of translat ... Full text Link to item Cite

A Visual Tool to Help Develop a Statistical Analysis Plan for Randomized Trials in Palliative Care.

Journal Article J Pain Symptom Manage · January 2023 Collaboration with a statistician about the design of a statistical analysis plan can be enhanced by illustrating how statisticians conceptualize their task. This conceptualization can be represented by a directed acyclic graph (DAG), which illustrates the ... Full text Link to item Cite

Are Simulated Coding Interviews a Fair and Practical Examination Format for Non-professional Programmers Enrolled in a Master's Degree Program in Biostatistics?

Journal Article Journal of Curriculum and Teaching · January 1, 2023 This report describes an innovative and evidence-based approach to implementing coding interviews as an examination format for non-professional programmers: namely, students in a Master of Biostatistics program taking a course in the language of SAS. In ad ... Full text Cite

Essential team science skills for biostatisticians on collaborative research teams.

Journal Article J Clin Transl Sci · 2023 INTRODUCTION: Despite the critical role that quantitative scientists play in biomedical research, graduate programs in quantitative fields often focus on technical and methodological skills, not on collaborative and leadership skills. In this study, we eva ... Full text Link to item Cite

Experiential Learning Methods for Biostatistics Students: A Model for Embedding Student Interns in Academic Health Centers.

Journal Article Stat · December 2022 This manuscript describes an experiential learning program for future collaborative biostatisticians (CBs) developed within an academic medical center. The program is a collaborative effort between the Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design (BERD ... Full text Link to item Cite

A comprehensive survey of collaborative biostatistics units in academic health centers.

Journal Article Stat (Int Stat Inst) · December 2022 The organizational structures of collaborative biostatistics units in academic health centers (AHCs) in the United States and their important contributions to research are an evolving and active area of discussion and inquiry. Collaborative biostatistics u ... Full text Link to item Cite

Establishing a Data Science Unit in an Academic Medical Center: An Illustrative Model.

Journal Article Acad Med · January 1, 2022 The field of data science has great potential to address critical questions relevant for academic medical centers. Data science initiatives are consequently being established within academic medicine. At the cornerstone of such initiatives are scientists w ... Full text Link to item Cite

A Course in Biology and Communication Skills for Master of Biostatistics Students

Journal Article Journal of Curriculum and Teaching · January 1, 2022 We describe an innovative, semester-long course in biology and communication skills for master’s degree students in biostatistics. The primary goal of the course is to make the connection between biological science and statistics more explicit. The seconda ... Full text Cite

Preorientation Curriculum: An Approach for Preparing Students with Heterogenous Backgrounds for Training in a Master of Biostatistics Program

Journal Article Journal of Curriculum and Teaching · January 1, 2022 We describe an innovative preorientation curriculum (POC) for a Master of Biostatistics (MB) program. The goal of the POC is to fill critical skills gaps for students entering the MB program from heterogeneous backgrounds so they are prepared to engage in ... Full text Cite

Administrative Considerations Pertaining to the Use of Creative Methods of Student Assessment: A Theoretically Grounded Reflection from a Master of Biostatistics Program

Journal Article Journal of Curriculum and Teaching · January 1, 2022 Student evaluation is a key consideration for educational program administrators because program success depends on students' ability to demonstrate successful development of core competencies. Student evaluations must therefore be aligned with learning ob ... Full text Cite

Redesign of a First-Year Theory Course Sequence in Biostatistics

Journal Article Journal of Curriculum and Teaching · January 1, 2022 This communication describes the process and results of a curriculum review of a first-year sequence of courses in statistical inference within a Master of Biostatistics program. Our primary aim was to develop an innovative course in statistical theory tha ... Full text Cite

Open versus minimally-invasive surgical techniques in pediatric renal tumors: A population-level analysis of in-hospital outcomes.

Journal Article J Pediatr Urol · August 2021 INTRODUCTION: Minimally-invasive surgery (MIS) has been adopted slowly in pediatric oncology. We attempted to describe contemporary national trends in MIS use; we hypothesized that adolescents (who are more likely to have relatively small renal cell carcin ... Full text Link to item Cite

Amputation Rates in More Than 175,000 Open Tibia Fractures in the United States.

Journal Article Orthopedics · January 1, 2021 Open tibia fractures are often associated with considerable soft tissue injuries. Management of open tibia fractures can be challenging, and some patients require amputation. The patient and treatment factors have not been described on a population level i ... Full text Link to item Cite

Guidance for biostatisticians on their essential contributions to clinical and translational research protocol review.

Journal Article J Clin Transl Sci · 2021 Rigorous scientific review of research protocols is critical to making funding decisions, and to the protection of both human and non-human research participants. Given the increasing complexity of research designs and data analysis methods, quantitative e ... Full text Link to item Cite

Methods for training collaborative biostatisticians.

Journal Article J Clin Transl Sci · August 4, 2020 The emphasis on team science in clinical and translational research increases the importance of collaborative biostatisticians (CBs) in healthcare. Adequate training and development of CBs ensure appropriate conduct of robust and meaningful research and, t ... Full text Link to item Cite

Learning gaps among statistical competencies for clinical and translational science learners.

Journal Article J Clin Transl Sci · June 19, 2020 INTRODUCTION: Statistical literacy is essential in clinical and translational science (CTS). Statistical competencies have been published to guide coursework design and selection for graduate students in CTS. Here, we describe common elements of graduate c ... Full text Link to item Cite

Patterns of inpatient care for prostate cancer in men with spina bifida.

Journal Article Disabil Health J · April 2020 BACKGROUND: Advances in medical care have increased the long-term survival of patients with spina bifida. Despite this growing population, limited knowledge is available on age-related illnesses in adults with spina bifida, particularly prostate cancer for ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Partial and radical nephrectomy in children, adolescents, and young adults: Equivalent readmissions and postoperative complications.

Journal Article J Pediatr Surg · November 2019 OBJECTIVES: To compare and contrast the use of partial nephrectomy (PN) and radical nephrectomy (RN) in pediatric malignant renal tumors using a nationally representative database. METHODS: The 2010-2014 Nationwide Readmissions Database (NRD) was used to o ... Full text Link to item Cite

National Imaging and Antibiotic Practice Patterns in Children Presenting With Urinary Tract Infection to Community Practices: Little Impact From the American Academy of Pediatrics Guidelines?

Journal Article Clin Pediatr (Phila) · October 2019 Our objective was to use community-based, national databases to evaluate diagnostic imaging and antibiotic prophylaxis practice patterns before and after the release of the 2011 American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for acute febrile urinary tract infe ... Full text Link to item Cite

Nationwide Readmission Rates Following Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy: Does Age Matter?

Journal Article J Endourol · September 2019 Introduction/Objectives: Despite minimal evidence that evaluates the effect of age on percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) morbidity, pediatric and elderly patients are considered high-risk groups. Our objective was to assess the effect of the extremes of a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Hospital and ED charges for spina bifida care in the United States between 2006 and 2014: Over $2 billion annually.

Journal Article Disabil Health J · July 2019 BACKGROUND: More children with spina bifida (SB) are surviving into adulthood. Unfortunately, little data exist regarding the economic implications of modern SB care. OBJECTIVE: We examined economic data from two national databases to estimate the annual n ... Full text Link to item Cite

Early Impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on Delivery of Children's Surgical Care.

Journal Article Clin Pediatr (Phila) · April 2019 The impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) on children's access to surgical care is not well-defined. Our objective was to describe the early impact of PPACA on children's surgical care before and after Medicaid expansion in 2014. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Clinical Features and Outcomes of Patients with Sarcoidosis-associated Pulmonary Hypertension.

Journal Article Sci Rep · March 11, 2019 The presence of pulmonary hypertension (PH) significantly worsens outcomes in patients with advanced sarcoidosis, but its optimal management is unknown. We aimed to characterize a large sarcoidosis-associated pulmonary hypertension (SAPH) cohort to better ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

First-year weight loss with androgen-deprivation therapy increases risks of prostate cancer progression and prostate cancer-specific mortality: results from SEARCH.

Journal Article Cancer Causes Control · March 2019 PURPOSE: We aimed to study the associations between androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT)-induced weight changes and prostate cancer (PC) progression and mortality in men who had undergone radical prostatectomy (RP). METHODS: Data from the Shared Equal Access ... Full text Link to item Cite

A Model of Cross-Disciplinary Communication for Collaborative Statisticians: Implications for Curriculum Design

Journal Article Journal of Curriculum and Teaching · August 3, 2018 The ability to bridge multiple disciplines is critical to the successful practice of collaborative statistics, yet theliterature on statistical education devotes relatively little attention to how this skill can be taught. Our goal here is todescri ... Full text Cite

The evaluation of three comorbidity indices in predicting postoperative complications and readmissions in pediatric urology.

Journal Article J Pediatr Urol · June 2018 INTRODUCTION: The surgical comorbidity assessment is important for patient risk stratification, counseling, and research. In adults, risk assessment indices, such as the Charlson Co-morbidity Score (CCS) or Van Walraven Index (VWI), are well established. I ... Full text Link to item Cite

Contemporary Demographic, Treatment, and Geographic Distribution Patterns for Disorders of Sex Development.

Journal Article Clin Pediatr (Phila) · March 2018 This study aimed to describe the demographic characteristics, hospital utilizations, patterns of inpatient surgical management, and the overall state/regional variation in surgery rate among patients with disorders of sex development (DSD). We analyzed the ... Full text Link to item Cite

Assessing the effort associated with teaching residents.

Journal Article J Plast Reconstr Aesthet Surg · December 2017 BACKGROUND: Intraoperative resident education is an integral mission of academic medical centers and serves as the basis for training the next generation of surgeons. The actual effort associated with teaching residents is unknown as it pertains to additio ... Full text Link to item Cite

A comparison of risk prediction methods using repeated observations: an application to electronic health records for hemodialysis.

Journal Article Stat Med · July 30, 2017 An increasingly important data source for the development of clinical risk prediction models is electronic health records (EHRs). One of their key advantages is that they contain data on many individuals collected over time. This allows one to incorporate ... Full text Link to item Cite

Clinical Acuity Shorthand System: a standardized classification tool to facilitate handoffs.

Journal Article J Surg Res · May 1, 2017 BACKGROUND: The handoff of medical information from one provider to another can be inefficient and error prone, potentially undermining patient safety. Although several tools for structuring handoffs exist, none provide a brief, standardized framework for ... Full text Link to item Cite

A LAG FUNCTIONAL LINEAR MODEL FOR PREDICTION OF MAGNETIZATION TRANSFER RATIO IN MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS LESIONS.

Journal Article The annals of applied statistics · December 2016 We propose a lag functional linear model to predict a response using multiple functional predictors observed at discrete grids with noise. Two procedures are proposed to estimate the regression parameter functions: (1) an approach that ensures smoothness f ... Full text Cite

A Two Sample Distribution-Free Test for Functional Data with Application to a Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study of Multiple Sclerosis.

Journal Article J R Stat Soc Ser C Appl Stat · April 1, 2016 Motivated by an imaging study, this paper develops a nonparametric testing procedure for testing the null hypothesis that two samples of curves observed at discrete grids and with noise have the same underlying distribution. The objective is to formally co ... Full text Link to item Cite

Scan-stratified case-control sampling for modeling blood-brain barrier integrity in multiple sclerosis.

Journal Article Stat Med · September 10, 2015 Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated neurological disease that causes morbidity and disability. In patients with MS, the accumulation of lesions in the white matter of the brain is associated with disease progression and worse clinical outcomes. B ... Full text Link to item Cite

Robustness of change detection algorithms

Conference Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) · November 9, 2011 Stream mining is a challenging problem that has attracted considerable attention in the last decade. As a result there are numerous algorithms for mining data streams, from summarizing and analyzing, to change and anomaly detection. However, most research ... Full text Cite

Robustness of Change Detection Algorithms in the Presence of Registration Errors

Journal Article Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing · April 1, 2007 Full text Cite