The goal of this study is to inform key decision-makers and the public about the role of obesity in developing major chronic conditions in the U.S. and the effects of major medications on body weight changes. The researchers will use data from athenahealth and machine learning predictive modeling techniques to address the following questions: 1) How can patterns of obesity and weight gain predict the development of other chronic conditions in various U.S. populations? 2) To what extent can prescribed medications affect and predict changes in body weight? Deliverables will include a project work plan and final narrative report. The researchers will also produce paper(s) suitable for publication and present findings at national research meetings and to other stakeholder audiences as appropriate, including policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels and other key stakeholders, as part of the deliverables for this grant.

Principal Investigators:

Rahmat Beheshti
Researcher

Rahmat Beheshti, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor in the Data Science Institute, the Department of Computer & Information Sciences, and the Epidemiology Program - University of Delaware

Rahmat Beheshti is an assistant professor in the Data Science Institute, the Department of Computer & Informat... Read Bio

Grant: #76778
Grantee Institution: University of Delaware
Grant Period: 9/15/19 – 9/14/20
 

Publications:

Identifying the Risks of Chronic Diseases Using BMI Trajectories
ARXIV | November 2021

Identifying the Leading Factors of Significant Weight Gains Using a New Rule Discovery Method
ARXIV | November 2021

Concurrent Imputation and Prediction on HER data using Bi-Directional GANs
ACM BCB | August 2021