Overview
The long-term goal of our research unit (the Pediatric Asthma Epidemiology Research Unit) is to determine the impact of asthma epidemiology on other disease epidemiology, such as microbial infections, at a population level. Our research unit takes two main approaches to meet this goal: one is a epidemiologic approach, the other is a laboratory one.

Specific Research Topics
Our clinical epidemiologic work on asthma focuses on the relationship between asthma and microbial infections, as well as the relationship between asthma epidemiology and other chronic disease epidemiology. Currently, our research unit is concerned about the potential influences of the rising trend of asthma or other atopic conditions on susceptibility to microbial infections at a population level. Our multidisciplinary research team makes an effort in identifying the mechanisms underlying the relationship between asthma and microbial infections. Specifically, our current research aims at determining the roles of T-helper 2 predominant cytokines (e.g., IL-4, 5, or 13) and HLA class II genes in the relationship between asthma and microbial infections using a clinical epidemiologic approach, basic immunology experiments, and transgenic mouse studies. Along these lines, our research unit is also extending our research efforts to the long-term relationship between asthma epidemiology and other chronic disease epidemiology.

Our social epidemiologic work is focusing on developing a socioeconomic index derived from housing features and neighborhood environment as a stepping-stone to further investigate the influence of socioeconomic environment on asthma and other health outcomes. We believe that socioeconomic environment in a life-course perspective may underlie combinations of risk factors over time through which operate the influence of socioeconomic environment on health outcomes. As a new socioeconomic index is successfully formulated in our research unit, we will determine the influence of socioeconomic environment (individual and neighborhood) on health outcomes, such as asthma incidence, morbidity, and mortality and its underlying mechanisms.

Our work has been funded by various agencies including the NIH, private foundations, and institutional grants. Our research team members represent multidiscplinary backgrounds including survey researcher, social scientist, immunogentic expert, clinical epidemiologist, basic immunologist, transgenic mouse lab, public health specialist, health policy analyst, statistician, Geographic Information System analyst, asthma specialist, allergy/immunologist, molecular and cellular immunologist, and community partners such as city planning department.