I have worked on two separate projects falling under the heading of perinatal research. One project, with Robert Platt, Michael Kramer (a perinatal researcher), and Michelle Ross, is developing methods for the construction of appropriate norms for fetus birthweight, head circumference, and birth length for a particular gestational age. It has been shown that babies who are below normal measurements for a particular gestational age are at increased risk for worse outcomes with respect to mortality and other features of child development. The difficulty for this problem relates to measurement error in the gestational age of the fetus at birth. Even a very small amount of gestational age measurement error can lead to severe misestimation

of extreme percentiles of the distribution. We have developed two different and novel

approaches that will substantially improve the current norms for birthweight. We

are now beginning work on extending both these approaches to establishing joint

norms for birthweight, birth length, and head circumference.

The second perinatal research project (with Phyllis Zelkowitz, Nancy Feely, Ian Shrier, and others) is a randomized clinical trial attempting to assess the impact of an intervention for maternal anxiety on infant development in very low birthweight infants (< 1500 g at birth). Drs. Zelkowitz (Psychiatry) and Feely (Nursing) have developed a new intervention that is designed to reduce anxiety in mothers of very low birth weight babies. I helped to design the RCT as the sole biostatistician and will lead all of the data analyses resulting from the project. My expertise in methods for missing data will be essential as, with these very low birthweight infants, there is grave potential for missing data due to lack of followup or adverse events relating to either mother or infant. The RCT began in June 2006 and data collection and monitoring of potential problems related to dropout or future analyses are regularly discussed. Patient recruitment ended in July 2008 and data collection should finish sometime early next year.