Professor
Department of Epidemiology, with joint appointments in the
Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the
Department of Biostatistics
Johns Hopkins University
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Since 1986, Dr. Muņoz has been intimately involved in large cohort studies of the epidemiology of kidney disease and of HIV/AIDS. His research interest is in statistical methods in epidemiology, particularly survival and longitudinal data analysis. He works at the juncture of quantitative and biological sciences and he has developed new methods for data analysis and has made novel contributions to substantive sciences using innovative data analysis methods. With his establishing of the Data Coordinating Centers of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) and the Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), Dr. Muņoz has contributed to the overall direction, conduct, analysis, and interpretation of the data of these very important studies of the natural history of HIV infection. In the late 1980s, Dr. Muņoz contributed methods to combine seroprevalent and incident cohorts for the characterization of the incubation period of AIDS. In the early 90s, Dr. Muņoz and collaborators documented the prognostic information of CD4 cell count on the development of PCP, and their work was instrumental in the issuing of Public Health Services guidelines regarding individuals who should receive prophylaxis for PCP. In the mid 1990s, Dr. Muņoz' work served to describe the occurrence and characteristics of long-term non-progressors with HIV infection. In addition, Dr. Muņoz played a pivotal role in the characterization of the joint prognostic information provided by HIV-RNA and CD4 cell count which, in turn, provided the basis for the establishment of guidelines for the treatment of HIV infected individuals with highly active antiretroviral therapies. Dr. Muņoz has also contributed to the elucidation of the effectiveness of HIV-1 therapies in the MACS, and the usefulness of cohort studies to examine treatment effectiveness at the individual and population levels. Experience and methods derived from research initiatives are part of two courses taught by Dr. Muņoz and collaborators: Advanced Methods for the Design and Analysis of Cohort Studies; and Cohort Studies: Design, Analysis and Application.
Since 1994, Dr. Muņoz has been the leader of the Biostatistics/Epidemiology Core of the Program Project "Molecular Biomarkers for Environmental Toxicants" in collaboration with faculty in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. In addition, Dr. Muņoz has directed, since 1995, Epidemiological/Biostatistical Centers for risk management programs for the abuse of Ultram (tramadol hydrochloride) and of opiods medications for pain (e.g., Hydromorphone, Hydrocodone, Oxycodone) in the United States.
In 2003, Dr. Muņoz expanded the scope of his activities to cohort studies of chronic kidney insufficiency (CKD) in children. The primary goal of the Cohort Study of Children with CKD is to describe the natural history of progression of kidney disease in children with mild to moderate kidney insufficiency and to determine how the decline of kidney function affects neuropsychological development, risk factors for cardiovascular disease and growth failure.
Dr. Muņoz has been chair of the Statistics in Epidemiology section of the American Statistical Association. He has been on the editorial boards of Statistics in Medicine, AIDS and Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. In 2003 and 2006, he received the Golden Apple award for excellence in teaching from the student assembly of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and the American Statistical Association.
Courses Taught:
- Advanced Methods for the Design and Analysis of Cohort Studies
- Cohort Studies: Design, Analysis and Applications
- Cohort Studies (Graduate Summer Program in Epidemiology)