Informed Population Health Opinions (INPHO)

Navigating today’s media landscape can be confusing, especially when it comes to topics of public health. Misinformation, contradicting opinions and evolving data make it difficult to understand health risks. Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences’ new Informed Population Health Opinions (INPHO) project aims to provide clear, unbiased information on today’s most pressing public and population health issues.

In each INPHO survey, the INPHO team chooses a topic and sends three statements to leading epidemiologists, public health and population health experts. Experts rate to what extent they agree or disagree with the statements and assess their confidence in their own opinions.

Results of previous INPHO surveys can be found in the "View Other Surveys" drop-down menu in the box below.

How it Works

The experts are surveyed on a regular basis to obtain their opinions on pertinent population health topics. Responses are recorded on a hundred-point scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree” (max = -50) to “Strongly Agree” (max = 50) with “No Opinion” or refusing to answer as available options. Experts also express their confidence on a hundred-point scale, where zero indicates extremely low confidence and one hundred extremely high confidence. In the event when the experts have overlapping confidence and agreement levels, the values of their agreement and confidence levels have been slightly "jittered" so that all their responses will be displayed on the scatterplot. This does not change the opinion of the experts, and the true values of their responses are still represented in the histogram and table. Optional comments and additional resources to support the answers are allowed. The results of the survey are displayed below. The INPHO project welcomes the public to submit suggested topics and questions to guide the content of the survey. 

Meet the Experts

Tarik Benmarhnia

  • Associate Professor
  • University of California, San Diego
  • Epidemiology; causal inference; climate change and health

Usama Bilal

  • Assistant Professor
  • Drexel University
  • Social Epidemiology

Courtney Boen

  • Assistant Professor
  • University of Pennsylvania
  • Population health; demography; racial health disparities

Richard Carpiano

  • Professor
  • University of California, Riverside
  • Population and Public Health, Health disparities, Vaccination acceptance and policy, social and behavioral science

Joan Casey

  • Assistant Professor
  • Mailman School of Public Health
  • Environmental epidemiology, spatial statistics, climate change, environmental justice

Ralph Catalano

  • Emeritus
  • University of California, Berkeley
  • Epidemiology, economics

Lynne Cossman

  • Professor
  • University of Texas - San Antonio
  • Spatial health disparities and access to care

Jennifer Dowd

  • Professor
  • University of Oxford
  • Demography & Epidemiology

Lakshmi Ganapathi

  • Instructor
  • Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
  • Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Public Health, Global Health

Alison Gemmill

  • Assistant Professor
  • Johns Hopkins University
  • Demography, Epidemiology, Social Determinants of Health, Maternal and Child Health, Sexual and Reproductive Health

Tiffany Green

  • Assistant Professor
  • Univeresity of Wisconsin - Madison
  • Economics, population health, reproductive health, health equity

Jodie Guest

  • Professor
  • Emory University
  • Infectious diseases, HIV, COVID-19, Monkeypox; emergency preparedness; science communication

George Kaplan

  • Emeritus
  • University of Michigan, Nova Institute for Health 
  • Social epidemiology, public health, population health

Jay Kaufman

  • Professor
  • McGill University
  • Epidemiology

Brian Kelly

  • Professor
  • Purdue University
  • Substance use

Josiah Kephart

  • Assistant Professor
  • Drexel University
  • Environmental epidemiology

Katherine Keyes

  • Professor
  • Columbia University
  • Epidemiology

Mathew Kiang

  • Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health
  • Stanford University
  • Computational epidemiology, social epidemiology

Jonathan Levy

  • Professor
  • Boston University
  • Environmental health, air pollution, housing, energy

Paula Lantz

  • Professor
  • University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy
  • Population health; public health policy; health equity; social policy

Alina Schnake-Mahl

  • Assistant Professor
  • Drexel University
  • Public Health - Social Epidemiology

Pricila Mullachery

  • Assistant Professor
  • Temple University
  • Health disparities

Matthew Pantell

  • Assistant Professor
  • University of California, San Francisco
  • Social determinants/drivers of health, social needs, social informatics, social epidemiology, social isolation, adverse childhood experiences, pediatrics, pediatric hospital medicine, implementation science

Julia Raifman

  • Assistant Professor
  • Boston University
  • Health and social policies

Anne Sosin

  • Clinical Researcher
  • Dartmouth College
  • Public health

Erin Strumpf

  • Associate Professor
  • McGill University
  • Health economics, health policy

Elizabeth Stuart

  • Professor
  • Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
  • Statistics, mental health, causal inference

Deshira Wallace

  • Assistant Professor
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Racialization; chronic disease prevention and management; type 2 diabetes; psychosocial stress; Latine health; Latin American health

Margaret Weden

  • Professor
  • RAND Corporation; Pardee RAND Graduate School
  • Social Epidemiology, social demography

Elizabeth Wrigley-Field

  • Assistant Professor
  • University of Minnesota
  • Mortality, racial disparities, demographic modeling

Fred Zimmerman

  • Professor
  • University of California, Los Angeles
  • Population health, health economics, health equity

Get Involved

These views represent the opinions of the individuals listed here and by no means represent the opinions of their affiliated institutions or Stanford University.