Lauren Zalla

Contributions to Public Health

• I study how social forces shape the population distribution of infectious diseases: for example, how racial residential segregation shaped the spread of COVID-19 in the United States and how socioeconomic disadvantage affects treatment outcomes among people living with HIV. 
  • Zalla LC, Martin CL, Edwards JK, Gartner DR, Noppert GA. A Geography of Risk: Structural Racism and COVID-19 Mortality in the United States. Am J Epidemiol. 2021;190(8):1439–1446. PMID: 33710272; PMCID: PMC7989642. 
  • Zalla LC, Jones JL, Moore RD, Falade-Nwulia OO, Keruly JC, Snow LN, Fojo AT, Dean LT, Lesko CR. Associations of routinely-collected measures of socioeconomic disadvantage with longitudinal care continuum outcomes in a clinical cohort of persons with HIV in the United States. Am J Public Health. In Press. 
• I use observational data to examine trends in infectious disease morbidity and mortality and identify population groups at greatest risk: For example, I published one of the first national studies documenting the disproportionate burden of the COVID-19 pandemic on racially minoritized groups in the United States.  My work in this area also led to a commentary on how infectious disease surveillance systems can be improved to advance health equity. 
  • Zalla LC, Mulholland GM, Filiatreau LE, Edwards JK. Racial/Ethnic and Age Differences in the Direct and Indirect Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on US Mortality. Am J Publ Health. 2022;112(1):154–164. PMID: 34936406; PMCID: PMC8713607. 
  • Noppert GA and Zalla LC (co-first authors). Who Counts and Who Gets Counted? Health Equity in Infectious Disease Surveillance. Am J Public Health 2021;111(6): 1004-1006. PMID: 33950717; PMCID: PMC8101575. 
• I study policy interventions, broadly defined, that have the potential to improve health outcomes among people with HIV: For example, I have studied how standardized national treatment guidelines and specific state and federal policies, such as Medicaid and AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, can close gaps in access to novel treatments for HIV. I currently have a K99/R00 award from NIAID to study the effects of urban disinvestment and urban redevelopment on health outcomes among people living with HIV. 
  • Zalla LC, Cole SR, Eron JJ, Adimora AA, Vines AI, Althoff KN, Silverberg MJ, Horberg MA, Marconi VC, Coburn SB, Lang R, Williams EC, Gill MJ, Gebo KA, Klein M, Sterling TR, Rebeiro PF, Mayor AM, Moore RD, Edwards JK. Association of Race and Ethnicity with Initial Prescription of Antiretroviral Therapy Among People with HIV in the US: October 2007 to April 2019. JAMA. 2023;329(1): 52-62. PMID: 36594946; PMCID: PMC9856806. 
  • Zalla LC, Lujintanon S, Horn T, Lesko CR. State-Level Variation in Access to Long-Acting Injectable Antiretroviral Therapy for HIV in the United States. Health Aff Sch. Feb 2025; 3(2):qxaf016. PMID: 39949828; PMCID: PMC11823123. 
• I study the causal effects of hypothetical interventions that have the potential to reduce health inequities: This work relies on causal inference methods, such as inverse probability weighting, for estimating causal effects from observational data. 
  • Zalla LC, Cole SR, Eron JJ, Adimora AA, Vines AI, Althoff KN, Marconi VC, Gill MJ, Horberg MA, Silverberg MJ, Rebeiro PF, Lang R, Kasaie P, Moore RD, Edwards JK. Evaluating Clinic-Based Interventions to Reduce Racial Differences in Mortality among People with HIV in the United States. J Infect Dis. 2023;jiad263. PMID: 37437108; PMCID: PMC10733732. 
  • Jackson JW, Hsu YJ, Zalla LC, Carson KA, Marsteller JA, Cooper LA, The RICH LIFE Project Investigators. Evaluating Effects of Multilevel Interventions on Disparity in Health and Healthcare Decisions. Prev Sci. Jun 2024; 25(Suppl 3):407-420. PMID: 38907802; PMCID: PMC11239607. 
• I work to develop and disseminate epidemiologic methods that improve our ability to answer policy-relevant research questions. For example, I have described how to distill big data into meaningful patterns using data movies and how to improve the public health impact of epidemiologic research. My work in this area has been published in leading epidemiologic journals including Epidemiology and the American Journal of Epidemiology. 
  • Zalla LC, Edwards JK, Rudolph JE, Mulholland GM, Cole SR. Data Movies: A Tool for Public Health. Epidemiol. 2023;34(6):854-855. PMID: 37757875. 
  • Lesko CR, Zalla LC, Ross RK, Rudolph JE, Smith ER, Edwards JK. A framework for thinking about the potential public health impact of epidemiologic research. Epidemiol. Mar 2026; 37(3):363-370. PMID: 41397236; PMCID: PMC12707578.