John Samuel Brownstein, Ph.D.

John Brownstein, PhD

Professor of Pediatrics, Boston Children's Hospital
Affiliate Member, Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School

John Brownstein is Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, a position shaped in large part by his career-long success in using emerging technologies to help clarify patterns of disease and promote public health interventions. His work has pioneered ‘digital epidemiology’—utilizing diverse digital data sources to understand population health—and his expertise here and in the area of geographic information systems has provided a key role in guiding DBMI on the consideration of place as a key disease risk factor. His portfolio at BCH includes grants from NIH, USAID, DoD, IARPA, CDC, Google, Skoll and Gates Foundation. Following receipt of his PhD in Epidemiology from Yale, Brownstein did a postdoctoral fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) before becoming a member of the faculty at BCH. 

The global distribution of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.
Authors: Messina JP, Pigott DM, Golding N, Duda KA, Brownstein JS, Weiss DJ, Gibson H, Robinson TP, Gilbert M, William Wint GR, Nuttall PA, Gething PW, Myers MF, George DB, Hay SI.
Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg
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Epidemic Wave Dynamics Attributable to Urban Community Structure: A Theoretical Characterization of Disease Transmission in a Large Network.
Authors: Hoen AG, Hladish TJ, Eggo RM, Lenczner M, Brownstein JS, Meyers LA.
J Med Internet Res
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Quantitative methods of identifying the key nodes in the illegal wildlife trade network.
Authors: Patel NG, Rorres C, Joly DO, Brownstein JS, Boston R, Levy MZ, Smith G.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
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Forecasting malaria in a highly endemic country using environmental and clinical predictors.
Authors: Zinszer K, Kigozi R, Charland K, Dorsey G, Brewer TF, Brownstein JS, Kamya MR, Buckeridge DL.
Malar J
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Characterizing Sleep Issues Using Twitter.
Authors: McIver DJ, Hawkins JB, Chunara R, Chatterjee AK, Bhandari A, Fitzgerald TP, Jain SH, Brownstein JS.
J Med Internet Res
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Methodological approaches to evaluate the impact of FDA drug safety communications.
Authors: Kesselheim AS, Campbell EG, Schneeweiss S, Rausch P, Lappin BM, Zhou EH, Seeger JD, Brownstein JS, Woloshin S, Schwartz LM, Toomey T, Dal Pan GJ, Avorn J.
Drug Saf
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Surveillance of Acute Respiratory Infections Using Community-Submitted Symptoms and Specimens for Molecular Diagnostic Testing.
Authors: Goff J, Rowe A, Brownstein JS, Chunara R.
PLoS Curr
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The Role of Social Mobilization in Controlling Ebola Virus in Lofa County, Liberia.
Authors: Fast SM, Mekaru S, Brownstein JS, Postlethwaite TA, Markuzon N.
PLoS Curr
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Dengue on islands: a Bayesian approach to understanding the global ecology of dengue viruses.
Authors: Feldstein LR, Brownstein JS, Brady OJ, Hay SI, Johansson MA.
Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg
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The digital phenotype.
Authors: Jain SH, Powers BW, Hawkins JB, Brownstein JS.
Nat Biotechnol
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