Education

• PhD London University 1984

Biography

I am a quantitative geographer with particular interests in geographic epidemiology, application of spatial statistical methods to area health and health survey data, and spatial demography. Since 2001 I have been a Research Professor in the School of Geography, and am also affiliated to the QMUL Life Sciences Institute. I have authored a range of articles and books, including ‘Applied Bayesian Hierarchical Methods’ (CRC, 2010) and ‘Bayesian Statistical Modelling’ (Wiley, 2006). My major projects recently have been development of health indicators (e.g. diabetes, obesity) for US micro areas (Zip Code Tracts), developing Scotland datazone population estimates using administrative datasets, and geographic interpolation to estimate area disease prevalence in North East London.

Research Interest

Spatial statistics, spatial epidemiology, Bayesian techniques, health inequality and prevalence variation, epidemiology of chronic diseases.

Professional Activities:

• Teaching: MSc International Health (Social Determinants of Health: Ecological Approaches)
• Editorial Board (Spatial Statistics), Springer Handbook of Regional Science, 2013
• Editorial Board Member, Journal of Biometrics & Biostatistics; Editorial Board of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health;
• Refereeing grant applications/project reviewing on behalf of ESRC, NHS Service Delivery and Organization R&D Programme, Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, Arts and Humanities Research Board; Research Grants Council (Hong Kong); Health Research Council of New Zealand; ESRC-NWO Bilateral Research Scheme, Chief Scientist Office (Edinburgh) HSR Training Scheme.
• Referee Panel ESRC/MRC Joint Studentship and Post-Doctoral Fellowship Scheme;
• Chartered Statistician;
• Elected Member, International Statistical Institute
• Guest Editor, Computational Statistics & Data Analysis (Special Issue, Spatial Statistics)
• External Reviewer NORFACE(Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe)

Publications

1. Congdon P (2015) Spatial variation in attributable risks, Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology, 12, 39-52
2. Congdon P (2015) Explaining Variations in Obesity and Inactivity between US Metropolitan Areas, GeoJournal, In Press.
3. Congdon P (2015) A Join Counts Method for Spatial Clustering in Disease from Relative Risk Models, Communications in Statistics – Theory and Methods, In press
4. Congdon P (2014) Modelling Changes in Small Area Disability Free Life Expectancy: Trends in London Wards between 2001 and 2011, Statistics in Medicine, 33(29), 5138–5150,
5. Congdon, P (2014) Applied Bayesian Modelling, 2nd edition, John Wiley
6. Congdon P, Cai Q, Puckrein P, Xu L (2014) Predicting Risks of Increased Morbidity among Atrial Fibrillation Patients using Consumption Classes, International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research, 2014, 3, 203-214
7. Congdon P (2014) Estimating Life Expectancy in Small Areas, with an Application to Recent Changes in Life Expectancy in US Counties. In: Mortality in an International Perspective, eds. J Anson, M Luy. Springer
8. Congdon P (2014) Interpolation between spatial frameworks: an application of process convolution to estimating neighbourhood disease prevalence. Stat Methods Med Res. 23(2):169-82
9. Congdon P (2014) Estimating life expectancies for US Small Areas: a regression framework, J Geog Systems 16, 1-18
10. Congdon P (2013) Spatially Interpolated Disease Prevalence Estimation using Collateral Indicators of Morbidity and Ecological Risk, Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2013 Oct 14;10(10):5011-25.
11. Congdon P (2013) Bayesian Modeling of Spatial Data. In: Handbook of Regional Science, Fischer, M, Nijkamp, P (eds.) Springer
12. Congdon, P (2013) Forecasting Regional Demand for Acute Health Care, Chapter 14 in Patient Flow: Reducing Delay in Healthcare Delivery, 2nd edition, Springer
13. Jonker, M, Congdon P, van Lenthe F, Burdorf A, Mackenbach J (2013) Small-area health comparisons using health-adjusted life expectancy: a Bayesian random-effects approach, Health & Place
14. Jonker M, van Lenthe F, Donkers B, Congdon P, Burdorf A, Mackenbach J (2013) The impact of nursing homes on small-area life expectancies. Health and Place, 19:25-32
15. Congdon P (2013) Assessing Univariate and Bivariate Spatial Clustering in Modelled Disease Risks. J Biomet Biostat 4:161.
16. Congdon P (2013) Modelling small-area inequality in premature mortality using years of life lost rates. Journal of Geographical Systems, 15(2): 149-167
17. Congdon P (2013) Assessing the impact of socioeconomic variables on small area variations in suicide outcomes in England, Int J Environ Res Public Health. 10(1):158-77.