Understanding the power of data: A conversation about CEDR with Sara Howard, Ph.D.

Sara Howard, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist for the ORISE Health Studies group. She is co-project manager of the Comprehensive Epidemiologic Data Resource (CEDR), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) data repository relating to the health effects for DOE workers, contractors, subcontractors, former workers, as well as the communities around DOE sites. Through CEDR, data is made available to researchers, educators and students, whether they are asking questions specific to radiation or are learning computer science, programming and statistics. Having a robust data resource like CEDR is important, Howard said, because science evolves. More questions may be asked. “Maybe we want to go back to this historical information, and maybe it's applying a new dosimetry model to the original exposure estimates and seeing how that compares against to what was already calculated. Maybe it is asking a completely new question or analyzing with a new method. That can get us even further in science. But you can't do any of that if you don't have data.” To learn more about CEDR, visit: https://oriseapps.orau.gov/cedr/