David Kline, PhD

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Data Science in the Division of Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. I have a secondary faculty appointment in the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention and an Affiliate Faculty appointment in the Department of Statistical Sciences.  I am also a Full Member of the Center for Addiction Research and the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity .  In addition, I co-lead the cross-campus collaborative Spatial and Environmental Statistics in Health Lab.

Public health surveillance involves the analysis and interpretation of health-related data essential to planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health policy and practice. My research is focused on developing biostatistical methodology to overcome challenges in public health surveillance and address key problems in population health and epidemiology. Specifically, I work on developing multivariate Bayesian hierarchical models for spatio-temporal disease mapping that leverage multiple sources of data to address complex, difficult to measure social and epidemiological problems, like the opioid epidemic. Through my research, I have developed expertise in small area estimation, spatio-temporal methods, multivariate modeling, and Bayesian methods. I am committed to collaborating with subject area experts so that we can leverage our collective expertise to best address challenging scientific questions of interest. 

In addition, I apply my biostatistical expertise in a wide variety of collaborative research.  I collaborate with researchers throughout Wake Forest University School of Medicine on projects that cover a broad spectrum of research topics and am part of BERD.  I primarily focus on modeling clinical and observational data. 

I currently serve on the Editorial Board for the journal Epidemiology. I am a member of the Board of Directors for Florence Nightingale Day for Statistics and Data Science and a co-organizer of Florence Nightingale Day at Wake Forest University.

Prior to joining Wake Forest, I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and a member of the Center for Biostatistics in the College of Medicine at The Ohio State University.

Recent Publications