George Howard DrPH, FAHA

Dr. George Howard is a Distinguished Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He received his training in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has had experience in biostatistics, data management, and the direction of coordinating centers of multicenter studies. His career has a dual focus on observational studies on cardiovascular epidemiology, with a recent focus to understand and reduce disparities in stroke and other cardiovascular diseases, and in the direction of coordinating centers for multi-center randomized clinical trials. For the former, he was the initial principal investigator (PI) (serving for the first 19 years of the project) and remains one of the multiple PIs for the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) project, a U.S. national study developing a cohort of over 30,000 individuals to provide insights to the excess stroke mortality among African Americans and Southerners. Previously, he was PI of the coordinating center for the Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Study (IRAS) and was one of the original investigators in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study. In the domain of clinical trials, he is the PI of the Statistical and Data Management Center for the Carotid Revascularization for Primary Prevention of Stroke Trial (CREST-2), a pair of randomized trials each with an anticipated sample size of 1,240 that assess: 1) the difference between carotid endarterectomy versus intensive medical management, and 2) between carotid stenting and intensive medical management. He was the PI of the Statistical and Data Coordinating Center for the Coordinated, Collaborative, Comprehensive, Family-based, Integrated, and Technology-enabled Care (C3FIT), a cluster-randomized trial assessing the efficacy coordination of post-stroke care. He is also the past PI of the Coordinating Centers for the Carotid Revascularization Endarterectomy Stenting Trial (CREST), Secondary Prevention of Small Subcortical Strokes (SPS3), and the Trial of Early Aggressive Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis (TEAR). He has more than 525 publications with an H-index of over 110, primarily in the analysis of cerebrovascular and cardiovascular risk factors, and has over 35 years of experience working directly with clinical investigators.