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Margaret Rita Karagas, PhD

Title(s)
Chair and Professor of Epidemiology
Professor of Community and Family Medicine
James W. Squires Professor

Additional Titles/Positions/Affiliations
Director, Center for Biomedical Research Excellence, Center for Molecular Epidemiology
Director, Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Center

Department(s)
Epidemiology
Community and Family Medicine

Education
University of Washington, PhD 1990

Programs
Norris Cotton Cancer Center
Quantitative Biomedical Sciences

Websites Margaret Karagas - Epidemiology Faculty Profile
Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Center
Center for Molecular Epidemiology
Cancer Epidemiology
Dartmouth Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program
Graduate Program in Quantitative Biomedical Sciences
The Dartmouth Institute
Dartmouth SYNERGY
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Contact Information

Department of Epidemiology
1 Medical Center Drive
Williamson Building, 7th floor
Lebanon NH 03756

Office: 760 Williamson Bldg Lebanon, NH
Email: Margaret.Karagas@dartmouth.edu

Assistant:
Asst. Phone:


Professional Interests

Professor Karagas is the inaugural chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the Geisel School of Medicine and director of the Centers for Molecular Epidemiology and Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research at Dartmouth College. As part of her deep commitment to interdisciplinary training, Professor Karagas collaboratively established an innovative, cross-disciplinary postdoctoral and graduate program in the quantitative biomedical sciences (QBS) that integrates epidemiology, bioinformatics, and biostatistics and mentors diverse investigators at all stages of their career. Her research interests encompass interdisciplinary studies that seek to illuminate the causes of human disease by investigating emerging environmental exposures, host factors, and mechanisms -- that impact health from infancy to adult life. Her studies focus on under-studied, rural populations while contributing to large multi-center efforts such as the NIH-funded Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Study, which includes over 90,000 participants across the USA. Her work incorporates high-dimensional analytic tools along with biomarkers and sensors of the exposome, genetic susceptibility and biologic response. These efforts have helped to uncovered adverse cardiometabolic, neurodevelopmental and immune-related pregnancy-child health outcomes as well as carcinogenic effects of drinking water contaminants, food-borne toxicants including in infant first foods, and exposures from woodstoves along with other environmental threats and have led to practice and policy changes. She has served on international consensus panels and committees for the United Nations, World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer, European Food Safety Authority, US National Institute of Health and National Academies of Science, and Engineering and Medicine among others.


Selected Publications

 

Automated classification of fat-infiltrated axillary lymph nodes on screening mammograms.
Song Q, diFlorio-Alexander RM, Sieberg RT, Dwan D, Boyce W, Stumetz K, Patel SD, Karagas MR, MacKenzie TA, Hassanpour S
Br J Radiol. 2023 Sep 26;:20220835. doi: 10.1259/bjr.20220835. Epub 2023 Sep 26.
PMID: 37751215

Evaluation of pediatric epigenetic clocks across multiple tissues.
Fang F, Zhou L, Perng W, Marsit CJ, Knight AK, Cardenas A, Aung MT, Hivert MF, Aris IM, Goodrich JM, Smith AK, Gaylord A, Fry RC, Oken E, O'Connor G, Ruden DM, Trasande L, Herbstman JB, Camargo CA Jr, Bush NR, Dunlop AL, Dabelea DM, Karagas MR, Breton CV, Ober C, Everson TM, Page GP, Ladd-Acosta C, program collaborators for Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes
Clin Epigenetics. 2023 Sep 2;15(1):142. doi: 10.1186/s13148-023-01552-3. Epub 2023 Sep 2.
PMID: 37660147

Neighborhood Opportunity and Vulnerability and Incident Asthma Among Children.
Aris IM, Perng W, Dabelea D, Padula AM, Alshawabkeh A, Velez-Vega CM, Aschner JL, Camargo CA Jr, Sussman TJ, Dunlop AL, Elliott AJ, Ferrara A, Joseph CLM, Singh AM, Breton CV, Hartert T, Cacho F, Karagas MR, Lester BM, Kelly NR, Ganiban JM, Chu SH, O'Connor TG, Fry RC, Norman G, Trasande L, Restrepo B, Gold DR, James P, Oken E, Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes
JAMA Pediatr. 2023 Aug 28; doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.3133. Epub 2023 Aug 28.
PMID: 37639269

Sociodemographic Differences in COVID-19 Pandemic Experiences Among Families in the United States.
LeWinn KZ, Trasande L, Law A, Blackwell CK, Bekelman TA, Arizaga JA, Sullivan AA, Bastain TM, Breton CV, Karagas MR, Elliott AJ, Karr CJ, Carroll KN, Dunlop AL, Croen LA, Margolis AE, Alshawabkeh AN, Cordero JF, Singh AM, Seroogy CM, Jackson DJ, Wood RA, Hartert TV, Kim YS, Duarte CS, Schweitzer JB, Lester BM, McEvoy CT, O'Connor TG, Oken E, Bornkamp N, Brown ED Jr, Porucznik CA, Ferrara A, Camargo CA Jr, Zhao Q, Ganiban JM, Jacobson LP, Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes Consortium
JAMA Netw Open. 2023 Aug 1;6(8):e2330495. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.30495. Epub 2023 Aug 1.
PMID: 37610749

Genome-scale methylation analysis identifies immune profiles and age acceleration associations with bladder cancer outcomes.
Chen JQ, Salas LA, Wiencke JK, Koestler DC, Molinaro AM, Andrew AS, Seigne JD, Karagas MR, Kelsey KT, Christensen BC
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2023 Aug 1; pii: EPI-23-0331. doi: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-23-0331. Epub 2023 Aug 1.
PMID: 37527159

Associations between area-level arsenic exposure and adverse birth outcomes: An Echo-wide cohort analysis.
Lewis JV, Knapp EA, Bakre S, Dickerson AS, Bastain TM, Bendixsen C, Bennett DH, Camargo CA, Cassidy-Bushrow AE, Colicino E, D'Sa V, Dabelea D, Deoni S, Dunlop AL, Elliott AJ, Farzan SF, Ferrara A, Fry RC, Hartert T, Howe CG, Kahn LG, Karagas MR, Ma TF, Koinis-Mitchell D, MacKenzie D, Maldonado LE, Merced-Nieves FM, Neiderhiser JM, Nigra AE, Niu Z, Nozadi SS, Rivera-Nuñez Z, O'Connor TG, Osmundson S, Padula AM, Peterson AK, Sherris AR, Starling A, Straughen JK, Wright RJ, Zhao Q, Kress AM
Environ Res. 2023 Jul 28;236(Pt 2):116772. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2023.116772. Epub 2023 Jul 28.
PMID: 37517496

Developing a National-Scale Exposure Index for Combined Environmental Hazards and Social Stressors and Applications to the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Cohort.
Martenies SE, Zhang M, Corrigan AE, Kvit A, Shields T, Wheaton W, Around Him D, Aschner J, Talavera-Barber MM, Barrett ES, Bastain TM, Bendixsen C, Breton CV, Bush NR, Cacho F, Camargo CA Jr, Carroll KN, Carter BS, Cassidy-Bushrow AE, Cowell W, Croen LA, Dabelea D, Duarte CS, Dunlop AL, Everson TM, Habre R, Hartert TV, Helderman JB, Hipwell AE, Karagas MR, Lester BM, LeWinn KZ, Magzamen S, Morello-Frosch R, O'Connor TG, Padula AM, Petriello M, Sathyanarayana S, Stanford JB, Woodruff TJ, Wright RJ, Kress AM, Program Collaborators for Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Jul 10;20(14) doi: 10.3390/ijerph20146339. Epub 2023 Jul 10.
PMID: 37510572

A Comparative Analysis of the Full and Short Versions of the Social Responsiveness Scale in Estimating an Established Autism Risk Factor Association in ECHO: Do we Get the Same Estimates?
Patti MA, Ning X, Hosseini M, Croen LA, Joseph RM, Karagas MR, Ladd-Acosta C, Landa R, Messinger DS, Newschaffer CJ, Nguyen R, Ozonoff S, O'Shea TM, Schmidt RJ, Trevino CO, Lyall K
J Autism Dev Disord. 2023 Jul 22; doi: 10.1007/s10803-023-06020-8. Epub 2023 Jul 22.
PMID: 37480437

Seasonal patterns in trace elements assessed in toenails.
Wojcik KM, Von Holle A, O'Brien KM, White AJ, Karagas MR, Levine KE, Jackson BP, Weinberg CR
Res Sq. 2023 Jun 29; pii: rs.3.rs-3093700. doi: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3093700/v1. Epub 2023 Jun 29.
PMID: 37461592

Opportunities for understanding the COVID-19 pandemic and child health in the United States: the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program.
Bekelman TA, Trasande L, Law A, Blackwell CK, Jacobson LP, Bastain TM, Breton CV, Elliott AJ, Ferrara A, Karagas MR, Aschner JL, Bornkamp N, Camargo CA Jr, Comstock SS, Dunlop AL, Ganiban JM, Gern JE, Karr CJ, Kelly RS, Lyall K, O'Shea TM, Schweitzer JB, LeWinn KZ
Front Pediatr. 2023;11:1171214. doi: 10.3389/fped.2023.1171214. Epub 2023 Jun 15.
PMID: 37397146

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