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Research & Publications

My research includes several different areas of environmental biostatistics, including:

I’m always looking to begin new collaborations, whether related to these topics or in a different area. Please contact me for more information.

For a complete list of publications, please see my Google Scholar page.

Measurement Error & Spatial Confounding

Two important challenges in air pollution epidemiology studies are exposure measurement error and unmeasured spatial confounding. Predicted exposures inherently have some error, and mitigating the impact of that error in downstream analyses is important. At the same time, unmeasured confounding can also bias health effect estimates due to the relationship between spatial exposures and unmeasured factors.

  • Keller JP and Szpiro AA. 2020. Selecting a Scale for Spatial Confounding Adjustment. 2020. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 183 Part 3:1121-1143. doi:10.1111/rssa.12556
  • Keller JP and Peng RD. 2019. Error in Estimating Area-Level Air Pollution Exposures for Epidemiology. Environmetrics, 30:8. doi:10.1002/env.2573
  • Krall J, Keller JP, and Peng RD. 2022. Assessing the health estimation capacity of air pollution exposure prediction models. Environmental Health, 21:35. doi:10.1186/s12940-022-00844-0
  • Keller JP, Chang HH, Strickland MJ, and Szpiro AA. 2017. Measurement Error Correction for Predicted Spatiotemporal Air Pollution Exposures. Epidemiology, 28, 338-345. doi:10.1097/EDE.0000000000000623
  • Chang HH and Keller JP. 2021. Spatial Exposure Measurement Error in Environmental Epidemiology. In Handbook of Measurement Error Models, Chapman and Hall/CRC. Editors: Grace Y. Yi, Aurore Delaigle, Paul Gustafson, 403-426.

Household Air Pollution

Household air pollution (HAP), particularly from combustion sources such as cookstoves, presents a major health burden around the world. In collaboration with epidemiologists and exposure scientists, I work on methods for improving our ability to quantify health effects of HAP.

Selected HAP-related publications:

  • Witinok-Huber R, Clark ML, Volckens J, Young BN, Benka-Coker ML, Walker E, Peel JL, Quinn C, and Keller JP. 2022. Effects of participant characteristics on personal and area exposure to fine particulate matter and black carbon. Environmental Research, 214(2):113869. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2022.113869
  • Keller JP and Clark ML. 2022. Estimating long-term average household air pollution concentrations from repeated short-term measurements in the presence of seasonal trends and crossover. Environmental Epidemiology, 6(1):e188. doi:10.1097/EE9.0000000000000188
  • Keller JP, Katz J, Pokhrel AK, Bates MN, Tielsch J, and Zeger SL. A Hierarchical Model for Estimating the Exposure-Response Curve by Combining Multiple Studies of Acute Lower Respiratory Infections in Children and Household Fine Particulate Matter Air Pollution. 2020. Environmental Epidemiology, 4(6):e119. doi:10.1097/EE9.0000000000000119
  • Benka-Coker ML, Young BN, Keller JP, Walker ES, Rajkumar S, Volckens J, Good N, Quinn C, L’Orange C, Weller ZD, Africano S, Osorto Pinel AB, Peel JL, and Clark ML. 2021. Impacts of the wood-burning Justa cookstove on fine particulate matter: a stepped-wedge randomized trial in rural Honduras. Science of the Total Environment, 767. DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144369
  • Young BN, Peel JL, Benka-Coker ML, Rajkumar S, Walker ES, Brook RD, Nelson TL, Volckens J, L’Orange C, Good N, Quinn C, Keller JP, Weller ZD, Africano S, Osorto Pinel AB, Clark ML. 2019. Study protocol for a stepped-wedge randomized cookstove intervention in rural Honduras: Household air pollution and cardiometabolic health. BMC Public Health, 19:903. doi:10.1186/s12889-019-7214-2

Health Effects of Outdoor Air Pollution Exposure

Quantifying the health effects of long-term air pollution exposure requires combining accurate exposure assessment, health outcomes, and other risk factor information. In collaborations with epidemiologists and clinicians, we have identified adverse effects of air pollution on cardiovascular outcomes, allergic disease, and cancer outcomes. Currently, I collaborate with members of the Gateway to Global Aging Project on understanding connections between environmental exposures and cognitive aging.

  • Keller JP, Dunlop J, Ryder NA, Peng RD, and Keet CA. 2022. Long-term Ambient Air Pollution and Childhood Eczema in the United States. Environmental Health Perspectives, 130(5). doi:10.1289/EHP11281
  • Demateis D, Keller KP, Rojas D, Kioumourtzoglou M-A, and Wilson A. 2024. Penalized Distributed Lag Interaction Model: Air Pollution, Birth Weight and Neighborhood Vulnerability. Environmetrics, 35(4):e2843. DOI:10.1002/env.2843
  • Keet CA, Keller JP, and Peng RD. 2018. Long-term coarse PM is associated with asthma among children in Medicaid. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 197(6):737-746. doi:10.1164/rccm.201706-1267OC
  • White AJ, Keller JP, Zhao S, Carroll R, Kaufman JD, and Sandler DP. 2019. Air pollution, clustering of particulate matter components and breast cancer. Environmental Health Perspectives, 127:10. doi:10.1289/EHP5131
  • Keller JP, Larson TV, Austin E, Barr RG, Sheppard L, Vedal S, Kaufman JD, and Szpiro AA. 2018. Pollutant composition modification of the effect of air pollution on progression of coronary artery calcium: the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. Environmental Epidemiology, 2(3):e024. doi:10.1097/EE9.0000000000000024
  • Hooper LG, Young MT, Keller JP, Szpiro AA, O’Brien KM, Sandler DP, Vedal S, Kaufman JD, and London SJ. 2018. Ambient air pollution and chronic bronchitis in a cohort of U.S. women. Environmental Health Perspectives, 126(2). doi:10.1289/EHP2199

Spatiotemporal Prediction of Outdoor Air Pollution

In studies of the health effects of long-term air pollution exposure, measurements of air quality are generally unavailable at the same locations as cohort members. Spatial or spatiotemporal models allow exposures to be predicted at cohort locations. These exposures include not only concentrations of single pollutants, but also lower-dimension representations of multipollutant exposures using approaches such as clustering.

  • Ryder NA and Keller JP. 2023. Spatiotemporal Exposure Surface Estimation with Penalized Regression. Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics. doi: 10.1007/s13253-022-00523-0
  • Keller JP, Drton M, Larson T, Kaufman JD, Sandler DP, and Szpiro AA. 2017. Covariate-adaptive clustering of exposures for air pollution epidemiology cohorts. Annals of Applied Statistics, 11(1), 93-113. doi:10.1214/16-AOAS992 R Package ‘predkmeans’.
  • Keller JP, Olives C, Kim S-Y, Sheppard L, Sampson PD, Szpiro AA, Oron AP, Lindström J, Vedal S, and Kaufman JD. 2015. A unified spatiotemporal modeling approach for prediction of multiple air pollutants in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Air Pollution. Environmental Health Perspectives, 123(4), 301-309. doi:10.1289/ehp.1408145
  • Wang M, Keller JP, Adar SD, Kim S-Y, Larson TV, Olives C, Sampson PD, Sheppard L, Szpiro AA, Vedal S, and Kaufman JD. 2015. Development of Long-term Spatiotemporal Models for Ambient Ozone in Six Metropolitan regions of the United States: the MESA Air Study. Atmospheric Environment, 123, 79-87. doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2015.10.042
  • Martenies SE, Keller JP, WeMott S, Kuiper G, Ross Z, Allshouse WB, Adgate JL, Starling AP, Dabelea D, and Magzamen S. 2021. A spatiotemporal prediction model for black carbon in the Denver metropolitan area, 2009-2018. Environmental Science & Technology, 55(5):3112-3123. doi:10.1021/acs.est.0c06451
  • Kirwa K, Szpiro AA, Sheppard L, Sampson PD, Wang M, Keller JP, Young MT, Kim S-Y, Larson TV, and Kaufman JD. 2021. Fine-scale air pollution models for epidemiologic research: Insights from approaches developed in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Air Pollution (MESA Air). Current Environmental Health Reports. doi:10.1007/s40572-021-00310-y

Barn Swallow Mating Behavior

In collaboration with Becca Safran and Iris Levin and their teams, we are studying factors that impact social and mating behaviors of Barn Swallows. This includes application of spatiotemporal and network statistics to tracking data from swallow behavior.

Risk Factors for Allergic Disease

In collaboration with immunologists at Johns Hopkins University, we are examining risk factors for pediatric allergic disease in the US Medicaid cohort.

  • Keller JP, Dunlop J, Ryder NA, Peng RD, and Keet CA. 2022. Long-term Ambient Air Pollution and Childhood Eczema in the United States. Environmental Health Perspectives, 130(5). doi:10.1289/EHP11281
  • Keet CA, Keller JP, and Peng RD. 2018. Long-term coarse PM is associated with asthma among children in Medicaid. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 197(6):737-746. doi:10.1164/rccm.201706-1267OC
  • McGowan EC, Keller JP, Dellon E, Peng RD, and Keet CA. 2020. Prevalence and Geographic Distribution of Pediatric Eosinophilic Esophagitis in the 2012 US Medicaid Population. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology-In Practice, 8(8):2796-2798.e4. doi:10.1016/j.jaip.2020.04.009
  • Dunlop JH, Keller JP, Peng RD, and Keet CA. The Effect of Season of Birth on Atopic Dermatitis and Food Allergy. Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, 125(2): 221-223.E2. doi:10.1016/j.anai.2020.04.034
  • McGowan EC, Keller JP, Dellon ES, Peng RD, Keet CA, Muir AB, and Jensen ET. 2021. Distance to Pediatric Gastroenterology Providers and Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE) in the 2012 U.S. Pediatric Medicaid Population. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology-In Practice. doi:10.1016/j.jaip.2021.08.034

Modeling Infectious Disease Spread

Mathematical and statistical models for infectious disease transmission are critical for understanding and forecasting factors affecting pandemics. I am interested in statistical models for disease spread that can incorporate irregular measurement processes and environmental factors.

  • Keller JP, Zhou T, Kaplan A, Anderson GB, Zhou W. 2022. Tracking the Transmission Dynamics of COVID-19 with a Time-Varying Coefficient State-Space Model. Statistics in Medicine, 41(15):2745-2767. doi:10.1002/sim.9382
  • Keller JP, Gerardo-Giorda L, and Veneziani A. 2013. Numerical simulation of a susceptible-exposed-infectious space-continuous model for the spread of rabies in raccoons across a realistic landscape. Journal of Biological Dynamics, 7(Suppl 1), 31-46. doi:10.1080/17513758.2012.742578