New Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics chair works toward health justice, inspired by his family’s experiences
More than two decades ago, Enrique Fabian Schisterman, PhD, and his wife set out to start a family. But they soon learned a harsh truth: Few effective and affordable treatments were available to help people achieve and maintain healthy pregnancies.
Fast forward to the present. Schisterman is now the proud father of two daughters, and, using expertise in biostatistics and epidemiology, he has made it his life’s work to help people start families of their own — particularly people of lower socioeconomic status. It’s work Schisterman is continuing at the Perelman School of Medicine, where earlier this year he was named chair of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics.
“When my wife and I were trying to start a family, I quickly realized that there wasn’t enough evidence out there to help couples become pregnant,” Schisterman said. “And a lot of the treatments that were available were not covered by insurance. Right there, I got motivated to embark on a career to find low-cost interventions that will help couples become pregnant and have a healthy pregnancy.”
Prior to joining Penn Medicine, Schisterman served as a senior investigator for the National Institutes of Health, specifically as epidemiology branch chief in the Division of Intramural Population Health Research in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers during his career, but the two he believes may be the most notable are studies that clarify which low-cost strategies can — or cannot– help those hoping to conceive a child.
“Low-cost interventions are critical to removing disparities,” he said. “For example, one of my studies [published in The Lancet in 2014] found that nine couples out of 100 were helped when the pregnant women took low-dose aspirin. This is a huge contribution to the ability of couples to afford and have access to care.” The other key study: In 2020, Schisterman published findings in JAMA that in couples where male partners supplemented their folic acid and zinc, live birth rates did not significantly improve — despite many claims and beliefs to the contrary.
While reproductive science is his primary research interest, Schisterman does research across a wide range of topics and fields – as does the department he now leads. The Department includes a thriving informatics division whose faculty members develop new methodology in artificial intelligence, natural-language processing, and machine learning; these methods make possible novel analyses of clinical data from electronic-health records and from population-based studies of common diseases.
At Penn Medicine, Schisterman’s multidisciplinary background is emblematic of his department’s approach to solving any problem.
“Penn Medicine is the perfect place for a person like me,” Schisterman said. “The integration between the academic environment and the medical system puts us in an optimal position to move science into implementation. More specifically in my department, there is integration between implementation science, epidemiology, biostatistics, clinical medicine and informatics, which is not common in many other places. This brings different talents and different people to the table.”
Schisterman is more than a researcher, however. Over the years, education has grown into a second passion, and it’s one he is excited to continue at Penn Medicine.
“It has been a gratifying experience to teach and mentor the future generation of epidemiologists, biostatisticians, and informaticians” he said. “I’ve realized that you have to be open to learning as much as to teaching. That lesson has been extremely rewarding.”
As a new chair, Schisterman is working on a plan for the department that will look as far as 10 years into the future. He envisions modern biostatistical methods, epidemiological trial emulation, clinical insights, and powerful informatics tools working together to offer new and better options for people facing various major health challenges — and where everyone has an equal shot at preventing illness.
“We are in a unique place for population-health and data health science,” he said. “We can take a holistic approach and look at all aspects of biology, modern epidemiology, biostatistics, informatics, and clinical medicine. We are all working together to give people the care they need and to remove disparities once and for all.”
— Scott Harris