DANA C. CRAWFORD, PHD
Associate Director for Population and Diversity Research
Dana Crawford, PhD, is Professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and Associate Director for Population and Diversity Research in the Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology. She also has a secondary appointment in the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences. Dr. Crawford received her Ph.D. at Emory University in genetics and molecular biology in 2000 and then trained as a post-doctoral fellow as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2000–2002) and as a senior fellow at the University of Washington’s Department of Genome Sciences (2002–2006). Prior to her most current position, Dr. Crawford spent eight years as tenure-track faculty in the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics and Investigator in the Center for Human Genetics Research at Vanderbilt University. As a genetic epidemiologist at CWRU, Dr. Crawford’s broad research interests include applying genetic variation data to large-scale epidemiologic and clinical cohorts to better understand human genotype-phenotype associations with an emphasis on diverse populations.
Recent Publications
- Jafari, E, Blackman, MH, Karnes, JH, Van Driest, SL, Crawford, DC, Choi, L, McDonough, CW. Using electronic health records for clinical pharmacology research: Challenges and considerations. Clin Transl Sci 2024; 17 (7): e13871. PubMed PMID:38943244 PubMed Central PMC11213823.
- Ferar, K, Hall, TO, Crawford, DC, Rowley, R, Satterfield, BA, Li, R, Gragert, L, Karlson, EW, de Andrade, M, Kullo, IJ et al.. Author Correction: Genetic variation in the human leukocyte antigen region confers susceptibility to Clostridioides difficile infection. Sci Rep 2023; 13 (1): 19972. PubMed PMID:37968452 PubMed Central PMC10652012.
- Wang, A, Shen, J, Rodriguez, AA, Saunders, EJ, Chen, F, Janivara, R, Darst, BF, Sheng, X, Xu, Y, Chou, AJ et al.. Characterizing prostate cancer risk through multi-ancestry genome-wide discovery of 187 novel risk variants. Nat Genet 2023; 55 (12): 2065-2074. PubMed PMID:37945903 PubMed Central PMC10841479.
- Ferar, K, Hall, TO, Crawford, DC, Rowley, R, Satterfield, BA, Li, R, Gragert, L, Karlson, EW, de Andrade, M, Kullo, IJ et al.. Genetic variation in the human leukocyte antigen region confers susceptibility to Clostridioides difficile infection. Sci Rep 2023; 13 (1): 18532. PubMed PMID:37898691 PubMed Central PMC10613277.
- Victoria-Castro, AM, Corona-Villalobos, CP, Xu, AY, Onul, I, Huynh, C, Chen, SW, Ugwuowo, U, Sarkisova, N, Dighe, AL, Blank, KN et al.. Participant Experience with Protocol Research Kidney Biopsies in the Kidney Precision Medicine Project. Clin J Am Soc Nephrol 2024; 19 (2): 202-212. PubMed PMID:37871973 PubMed Central PMC10861112.
- Darst, BF, Shen, J, Madduri, RK, Rodriguez, AA, Xiao, Y, Sheng, X, Saunders, EJ, Dadaev, T, Brook, MN, Hoffmann, TJ et al.. Evaluating approaches for constructing polygenic risk scores for prostate cancer in men of African and European ancestry. Am J Hum Genet 2023; 110 (7): 1200-1206. PubMed PMID:37311464 PubMed Central PMC10357473.
- Darst, BF, Shen, J, Madduri, RK, Rodriguez, AA, Xiao, Y, Sheng, X, Saunders, EJ, Dadaev, T, Brook, MN, Hoffmann, TJ et al.. Evaluating Approaches for Constructing Polygenic Risk Scores for Prostate Cancer in Men of African and European Ancestry. medRxiv 2023; : . PubMed PMID:37292833 PubMed Central PMC10246022.
- Drouet, DE, Liu, S, Crawford, DC. Assessment of multi-population polygenic risk scores for lipid traits in African Americans. PeerJ 2023; 11 : e14910. PubMed PMID:37214096 PubMed Central PMC10198155.
- Cruz, LA, Cooke Bailey, JN, Crawford, DC. Importance of Diversity in Precision Medicine: Generalizability of Genetic Associations Across Ancestry Groups Toward Better Identification of Disease Susceptibility Variants. Annu Rev Biomed Data Sci 2023; 6 : 339-356. PubMed PMID:37196357 PubMed Central PMC10720270.
- Nealon, CL, Halladay, CW, Gorman, BR, Simpson, P, Roncone, DP, Canania, RL, Anthony, SA, Sawicki Rogers, LR, Leber, JN, Dougherty, JM et al.. Association Between Fuchs Endothelial Corneal Dystrophy, Diabetes Mellitus, and Multimorbidity. Cornea 2023; 42 (9): 1140-1149. PubMed PMID:37170406 PubMed Central PMC10523841.
Featured Publications
Using Electronic Health Records to Generate Phenotypes for Research
Sarah A. Pendergrass and Dana C. Crawford Electronic health records contain patient-level data collected during and for clinical care. Data within the electronic health record include diagnostic billing codes, procedure codes, vital signs, laboratory test results, clinical imaging, and physician notes. With repeated clinic visits, these data are longitudinal, providing important information on disease development, […]
Local genetic ancestry in CDKN2B-AS1 is associated with primary open-angle glaucoma in an African American cohort extracted from de-identified electronic health records.
Restrepo NA, Laper S, Farber-Eger E, Crawford DC. Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness in developed countries. Primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG), the most prevalent clinical subtype of glaucoma in the United States, affects African Americans at a higher rate compared with European Americans. Risk factors identified for POAG include increased age and family history, […]
Reducing Clinical Noise for Body Mass Index Measures Due to Unit and Transcription Errors in the Electronic Health Record.
Goodloe R, Farber-Eger E, Boston J, Crawford DC, Bush WS,. Body mass index (BMI) is an important outcome and covariate adjustment for many clinical association studies. Accurate assessment of BMI, therefore, is a critical part of many study designs. Electronic health records (EHRs) are a growing source of clinical data for research purposes, and have […]
Fine-mapping of lipid regions in global populations discovers ethnic-specific signals and refines previously identified lipid loci.
Zubair N, Graff M, Luis Ambite J, Bush WS, Kichaev G, Lu Y, Manichaikul A, Sheu WH, Absher D, Assimes TL, Bielinski SJ, Bottinger EP, Buzkova P, Chuang LM, Chung RH, Cochran B, Dumitrescu L, Gottesman O, Haessler JW, Haiman C, Heiss G, Hsiung CA, Hung YJ, Hwu CM, Juang JJ, Le Marchand L, Lee […]