Multilevel Modeling

I am the lead investigator implementing multilevel modeling approaches to examine intersectional health inequities using I-MAIHDA (intersectional multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy).

Mental health disparities among US high school students at the intersection of race, gender, and sexual orientation.

We uncovered a nuanced pattern of teen mental health inequities in the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey data, and provided insights into the groups most impacted by the disruptions that occurred during 2020.

• Merchant, J.S., Nguyen, T.T., Makres, K., & Evans, C.R. Intersectional inequities in suicide ideation by race, sexual orientation, and gender among U.S. high school youth pre and post 2020: An application of random effects intersectional MAIHDA (under review). Special issue on methods in social epidemiology for American Journal of Epidemiology.

Intersectional Differences in Cognitive Aging Trajectories.

Currently working on expanding the I-MAIHDA approach to examine longitudinal cognitive aging data in the Health and Retirement study data. So far, we’re finding differences in the onset of dimentia between the ages of 70-75 at the intersection of race, gender, and education.