Rod Walker, MS

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“I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to provide biostatistical support across a wide range of KPWHRI collaborations that contribute to public health knowledge and improve health care for patients.”

Rod Walker, MS

Principal Collaborative Biostatistician, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute

Rod.L.Walker@kp.org
206-287-2895

Biography

Rod Walker, MS, has developed a diverse research portfolio in his 10+ years working as a biostatistician at KPWHRI. His varied interests have led to collaborations in women's health, cancer, aging and geriatrics, pharmacoepidemiology, opioids research, and mental health. During his tenure he has served as an analyst for the Statistical Coordinating Center for the National Cancer Institute's Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, evaluated the impact of health system initiatives to reduce risk associated with chronic opioid therapy prescribing, and investigated potential associations between different medications classes and a wide range of outcomes such as pneumonia, fall-related injury, and dementia.

One of Mr. Walker’s longest-running collaborations is with the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study, an ongoing longitudinal cohort study seeking to bolster knowledge of risk factors related to dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and healthy aging. As this project and related studies have grown, he has contributed to analyses of associations between medication use and laboratory values and cognitive outcomes within this cohort of older adults, extended this research to associations with neuropathology measures among autopsied individuals, and helped process and analyze activity monitoring data generated from devices worn by ACT participants. Continued collaboration with ACT-related investigators is a highlight of his research at KPWHRI, as the ACT study provides many avenues for increasing public health knowledge of issues relevant for older adults.

A relatively new area of collaboration for Mr. Walker is with researchers from the Mental Health Research Network seeking to use information captured in electronic health records to predict risk of suicide attempt and suicide death. He has appreciated learning from other investigators and biostatisticians on this project, expanding his knowledge in machine learning and risk prediction, as well as in potential issues surrounding health informatics and implementation of tools into clinical workflows. He looks forward to continued opportunities within this research area to address important public health issues in mental and behavioral health.

Research interests and experience

  • Biostatistics

    Survival and longitudinal data analysis; epidemiology; machine learning; two-phase sampling

  • Aging & Geriatrics

    Biostatistics; cognitive health and dementia; neuropathologic correlates of dementia; factors associated with healthy aging

  • Health Informatics

     

  • Mental Health

    Biostatistics; suicide risk prediction; interventions for risk reduction; machine learning and health informatics

  • Medication Use & Patient Safety

    Biostatistics; pharmacoepidemiology; medication safety in older adults; opioids and chronic pain

  • Women's Health

Recent publications

Gray SL, Anderson ML, Hanlon JT, Dublin S, Walker RL, Hubbard RA, Yu O, Montine TJ, Crane PK, Sonne JA, Keene CD, Larson EB. Exposure to strong anticholinergic medications and dementia-related neuropathology in a community-based autopsy cohort. J Alzheimers Dis. 2018 Jul 21. pii: JAD171174. doi: 10.3233/JAD-171174. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed

Harding BN, Weiss NS, Walker RL, Larson EB, Dublin S. Proton pump inhibitor use and the risk of fractures among an older adult cohort. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2018 Feb 28. doi: 10.1002/pds.4406. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed

Jones SMW, Walker R, Fujii M, Nekhlyudov L, Rabin BA, Chubak J. Financial difficulty, worry about affording care, and benefit finding in long-term survivors of cancer. Psychooncology. 2018 Apr;27(4):1320-1326. doi: 10.1002/pon.4677. Epub 2018 Mar 8. PubMed

Wang L, Hubbard RA, Walker RL, Lee EB, Larson EB, Crane PK. Assessing robustness of hazard ratio estimates to outcome misclassification in longitudinal panel studies with application to Alzheimer's disease. PLoS One. 2017 Dec 22;12(12):e0190107. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0190107. eCollection 2017. PubMed

Flanagan ME, Larson EB, Walker RL, Keene CD, Postupna N, Cholerton B, Sonnen JA, Dublin S, Crane PK, Montine TJ. Associations between use of specific analgesics and concentrations of amyloid-beta 42 or phospho-tau in regions of human cerebral cortex. J Alzheimers Dis. 2017 Dec 8. pii: JAD170414. doi: 10.3233/JAD-170414. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed

 

Research

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Traumatic brain injury raises risk of brain atrophy

Study suggests pathology of brain cell loss after traumatic head injury is distinct from Alzheimer’s disease.

New findings

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Simpler models to identify suicide risk perform similarly to more complex ones

Models that are easier to explain, use could have better uptake in health care settings.

COVID-19

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Greater infection risks linked to COVID-19 disparities

New work by Susan Shortreed, PhD, finds infection risks drive worse outcomes for some racial and ethnic groups.