Computer Studies Bldg. 209
Stumbling Through the Dark to Find "Hidden" Populations: Adventures in the Unanticipated Uses of Networks in Suicide Prevention and Services Research
In 1439, Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type. He first chose to use his innovation to mass produce exactly what he knew as a book: the Bible. The jump between his famous Bible and, for example, the Harry Potter series of today would have appeared as magical to the German inventor as the content of J.K. Rowling's books themselves. Yet is is precisely these types of unintended uses that results in the chain of innovations unleashed by invention. In current parlance, we speak of "translational research" that aims to analogously facilitate this process in the biomedical sciences. Our group has focused on understanding and translating algorithmic approaches to search, learning, and related technologies to the specific problem of suicide prevention in a high-risk, yet infamously difficult to reach population of gay and lesbian teens and young adults. While perhaps not as exciting as moving from Gutenberg's Bible to Danielle Steel novels, our basic approach has been to pull together interdisciplinary insights to address a previously insoluble problem of high public health significance in new ways. In this talk, we will review our exploration of search technologies to reach this "hidden population", and our preliminary efforts to apply statistical learning to network-based suicide prevention interventions. Time permitting, we will discuss related efforts to design a collective intelligence-based pilot for HIV prevention in Cape Town, South Africa.
Bio:
Vincent M. B. Silenzio, M.D., M.P.H., is a researcher in the University of Rochester’s Center for Study and Prevention of Suicide, and is Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Community & Preventive Medicine, and Family Medicine. He is a native of Philadelphia, and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and UMDNJ- NJ Graduate School of Public Health. He completed residency and fellowship training in Family Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Dr. Silenzio has served on the faculty of UMDNJ and Columbia University, and was a founding faculty member in Columbia’s Center for Gender, Sexuality and Health. Dr. Silenzio’s current research focuses on suicide prevention in a high-risk, “hidden population” of sexual minority adolescents and young adults by studying diffusion and communication processes within very-large-scale network data sets derived from online social media.
Refreshments will be provided at 10:45AM