Laura C. A. Rosella is a Canadian epidemiologist who is an Associate Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in the University of Toronto. She studies public health and the social determinants of health. Rosella holds a Canada Research Chair in Population Health Analytics.
Early life and education
Rosella was an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, where she majored in health science and epidemiology.[1] She remained at the University for her graduate studies, where she evaluated public health risk in people with diabetes mellitus.[2]
Research and career
Rosella is a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.[3] Rosella is the Scientific Director of the Population Health Analytics Laboratory.[4] She has looked to prevent diabetes, through regular screenings and partnerships with provincial health ministries.[1] She developed DPoRT, a Diabetes Population Risk Tool which identifies the optimum cut offs for health screenings to prevent adverse medical outcomes.[5] At the same time, Rosella investigates how people living with diabetes accumulate chronic conditions. She combines her understanding of social and behavioural risk factor data with an understanding of healthcare utilisation to eliminate persistent health inequalities.[1]
From 2018 to 2022, she served as president of the Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics.[6]
In November 2020, Rosella joined the Institute for Better Health as the Stephen Family Research Chair in Community Health.[7] In this capacity she looks to improve public health decision making and promote the equitable distribution of healthcare.[7] Rosella has evaluated the use of machine learning in predicting population health. She found that the majority of machine learning applications only made use of traditional data sources, and rarely used big data.[8]
