I am an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati. As a biostatistician, epidemiologist, and geospatial data scientist, I have specialized myself in the areas of informatics and machine learning with applications to population-level environmental, community, and health outcome data. I develop new methods and technologies to support environmental and population health research, including tools for geocoding and geomarker assessment, high resolution spatiotemporal exposure assessment models, and causal inference machine learning methods. I lead research on the roles of environmental exposures and community characteristics on pediatric psychiatric health by applying these methods and tools to large databases of electronic health records, observational cohort studies, clinical registries, and vital records.

Built Environment and Pediatric Psychiatric Disorders

Building on advanced exposure assessment has allowed me to lead epidemiological studies on the impacts of the built environment (e.g., fine particulate matter, greenspace, community deprivation) on psychiatric and neurobehavioral pediatric health outcomes. I led the first study to associate fine particulate matter with psychiatric outcomes in children and adolescents, using both electronic health record studies, as well as more detailed longitudinal panel studies. Multi-site cohort studies, such as the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, has facilitated a step towards understanding the neurodevelopmental mechanisms underlying the associations between air pollution, cognition, and mental health.

  1. Andrew Vancil, Jeffrey R Strawn, Erika Rasnick, Amir Levine, Heidi K Schroeder, Ashley M Specht, Ashley L Turner, Patrick H Ryan, Cole Brokamp. Pediatric Anxiety and Daily Fine Particulate Matter: A Longitudinal Study. Psychiatry Research Communications. In Press. 2022.

  2. Clara G Zundel, Samantha Ely, Cole Brokamp, Jeffrey R Strawn, Tanja Jovanovic, Patrick Ryan, Hilary Marusak. Particulate Matter Exposure and Default Mode Network Equilibrium duing Early Adolescence. Brain Connectivity. Online. 2024.

  3. Erika Rasnick, Patrick H. Ryan, A. John Bailer, Thomas Fisher, Patrick J. Parsons, Kimberly Yolton, Nicholas C. Newman, Bruce P. Lanphear, Cole Brokamp. Identifying Sensitive Windows of Airborne Lead Exposure Associated with Behavioral Outcomes at Age 12. Environmental Epidemiology. 5(2):e144. 2021.

  4. Cole Brokamp, Jeffrey R. Strawn, Andrew F. Beck, Pat Ryan. Pediatric Psychiatric Emergency Department Utilization and Fine Particulate Matter: A Case-Crossover Study. Environmental Health Perspectives. 127(9). 2019.

Causal Mediation of Place-Based Factors on Pediatric Health Disparities

I have applied advanced causal modeling techniques within population-wide health registries and multi-site prospective cohort studies. By linking study participants’ addresses to extant social and environmental determinants of health data sources, we study the mechanisms behind racial and socioeconomic disparities in pediatric health outcomes.

  1. Cole Brokamp, Margaret N Jones, Qing Duan, Erika Rasnick Manning, Sarah Ray, Alexandra MS Corley, Joseph Michael, Stuart Taylor, Ndidi Unaka, Andrew F Beck. Causal Mediation of Neighborhood-Level Pediatric Hospitalization Inequities. Pediatrics. In Press. 2024.

  2. Esteban Correa, Lili Ding, Andrew F. Beck, Cole Brokamp, Mekibib Altayeb, Robert S. Kahn, Tesfay Mersha. Understanding Racial Disparities in Childhood Asthma Using Individual- and Neighborhood-Level Risk Factors. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. In Press. 2022.

  3. Antonella Zanobetti, Patrick H. Ryan, Brent Coull, Cole Brokamp, Soma Datta, Jeffrey Blossom, Nathan Lothrop, Rachel L. Miller, Paloma I. Beamer, Cynthia M. Visness, Howard Andrews, Leonard B. Bacharier, Tina Hartert, Christine C. Johnson, Dennis Ownby, Gurjit K. Khurana Hershey, Christine Joseph, Song Yiqiang, Eneida Mendoza, Daniel J. Jackson, Heike Luttmann-Gibson, Edward M. Zoratti, Anne L. Wright, Fernando D. Martinez, Christine M. Seroogy, James E. Gern, Diane R. Gold, for the Children’s Respiratory and Environmental Workgroup (CREW) Consortium. Childhood Asthma Incidence, Early and Persistent Wheeze, and Neighborhood Socioeconomic Factors in the ECHO/CREW Consortium. JAMA Pediatrics. Online. 2022.

  4. Patrick H Ryan, Antonella Zanobetti, Brent A. Coull, Howard Andrews, Leonard B Bacharier, Dakota Bailey, Paloma I. Beamer, Jeff Blossom, Cole Brokamp, Soma Datta, Tina Hartert, Gurjit K. Khurana Hershey, Daniel J Jackson, Christine C Johnson, Christine Joseph, Jorja Kahn, Nathan Lothrop, Margee Louisias, Heike Luttmann-Gibson, Fernando D. Martinez, Eneida Mendonça, Rachel L. Miller, Dennis Ownby, Sima Ramratnam, Christine M Seroogy, Cynthia M Visness, Anne L Wright, Edward M. Zoratti, James E. Gern, Diane R. Gold. The Legacy of Redlining: Increasing Childhood Asthma Disparities Through Neighborhood Poverty. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Online. 2024.

Fairness in Pediatric Precision Medicine

My research group has lead several studies on the racial and ethnic fairness of pediatric precision medicine tools used in clinical and epidemiologic settings. We have been the first to uncover racial biases in commonly used asthma diagnosis and cystic fibrosis exacerbation clinical precision medicine tools. Additionally, we have focused on the racial biases that can be introduced into epidemiologic research through the use of common exposure and socioeconomic status assessment tools.

  1. Harsimran Makkad, Amisha Saini, Erika Rasnick Manning, Qing Duan, Stephen Colegate, Cole Brokamp. Racial Fairness of Individual- and Community-Level Proxies of Socioeconomic Status Among Birthing Parent–Child Dyads. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. Online. 2024.

  2. Stephen P Colegate, Anushka Palipana, Emrah Gecili, Rhonda D Szczesniak, Cole Brokamp. Evaluating Precision Medicine Tools in Cystic Fibrosis for Racial and Ethnic Fairness. Journal of Clinical and Translational Science. In press. 2024.

  3. Jordan Pennington, Erika Rasnick, Lisa J. Martin, Jocelyn M. Biagini, Tesfaye B. Mersha, Allison Parsons, Gurjit K. Khurana Hershey, Patrick Ryan, Cole Brokamp. Racial Fairness in Precision Medicine: Pediatric Asthma Prediction Algorithms. American Journal of Health Promotion. 37(2). 2022.

Privacy-based Methods and Software for Geocoding and Geomarker Assessment

Our group developed and maintains a novel approach and accompanying software package called DeGAUSS which overcomes multiple privacy-related challenges in the use of address data in multi-site studies and also serves as a more general reproducible and scalable research tool for geocoding and geomarker assessment. This approach is currently being implemented in a wide variety of national environmental health studies and in several clinical electronic health data warehouses. Extending this approach into a scalable and sustainable framework for automated integration of disparate and heterogeneous geomarkers via spatiotemporal location has reduced the need for manual data curation and specialized expertise required to utilize them within biomedical research studies.

  1. Erika Rasnick Manning, Qing Duan, Stuart Taylor, Sarah Ray, Alexandra MS Corley, Joseph Michael, Ryan Gillette, Ndidi Unaka, David Hartley, Andrew F Beck, Cole Brokamp. Development of a Multimodal Geomarker Pipeline to Assess the Impact of Social, Economic, and Environmental Factors on Pediatric Health Outcomes. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. In press. 2024.

  2. Erika Rasnick, Patrick Ryan, Jeff Blossom, Heike Luttmann-Gibson, Nathan Lothrop, Rima Habre, Diane R Gold, Andrew Vancil, Joel Schwartz, James E Gern, Cole Brokamp. High Resolution and Spatiotemporal Place-Based Computable Exposures at Scale. AMIA Summits on Translational Science Proceedings. 2023:62-70. 2023.

  3. Patrick H. Ryan, Cole Brokamp, Jeff Blossom, Nathan Lothrop, Rachel L. Miller, Paloma I. Beamer, Cynthia M. Visness, Antonella Zanobetti, Howard Andrews, Leonard B. Bacharier, Tina Hartert, Christine C. Johnson, Dennis Ownby, Robert F. Lemanske Jr., Heike Gibson, Weeberb Requia, Brent Coull, Edward M. Zoratti, Anne L. Wright, Fernando D. Martinez, Christine M. Seroogy, James E. Gern, Diane R. Gold, on behalf of the CREW Consortium. A Distributed Geospatial Approach to Describe Community Characteristics for Multi-Site Studies. Journal of Clinical and Translational Science. 5:e86, 1-8. 2021.

  4. Cole Brokamp, Chris Wolfe, Todd Lingren, John Harley, Patrick Ryan. Decentralized and Reproducible Geocoding and Characterization of Community and Environmental Exposures for Multi-Site Studies. Journal of American Medical Informatics Association. 25(3); 309-314. 2017.

Spatiotemporal Exposure Assessment Methods and Machine Learning Models

My early career was spent developing spatiotemporal exposure assessment models for environmental pollutants and community characteristics based on machine learning techniques. This work includes the first machine learning or ensemble model used to assess exposure to elemental components of particulate matter. Recent introduction of remote sensing satellite data has allowed for extension of the land use random forest model to produce daily estimates of air pollution back to 2000 at a resolution of 1 x 1 km. I created a nationwide, census tract-level, and validated community material deprivation index that has been used and cited by over 75 different published scientific studies. It was originally created to estimate the causal impact of community material deprivation on hospitalization during the first year of life, but has also been used across several medical subspecialties to quantify health disparities.

  1. Cole Brokamp. A High Resolution Spatiotemporal Fine Particulate Matter Exposure Assessment Model for the Contiguous United States. Environmental Advances. 7:100155. 2022.

  2. Cole Brokamp, Andrew F. Beck, Neera K. Goyal, Patrick Ryan, James M. Greenberg, Eric S. Hall. Material Community Deprivation and Hospital Utilization During the First Year of Life: An Urban Population-Based Cohort Study. Annals of Epidemiology. 30. 2019.

  3. Cole Brokamp, Roman Jandarov, Monir Hossain, Patrick Ryan. Predicting Daily Urban Fine Particulate Matter Concentrations Using Random Forest. Environmental Science & Technology. 52 (7); 4173-4179. 2018.

  4. Cole Brokamp, Roman Jandarov, MB Rao, Grace LeMasters, Patrick Ryan. Exposure assessment models for elemental components of particulate matter in an urban environment: A comparison of regression and random forest approaches. Atmospheric Environment. 151; 1-11. 2017.