Left: Omar Mansour with other Mac attendees

“My statistics and computer science courses really helped me to qualify for the SUMR program at Penn. … My work on TB in Kenya with Professor Christy Hanson was also great preparation.” –Omar Mansour ’15 

Asthma affects 230 million people in the world, almost 26 million in the U.S. alone. With limited public health dollars, it’s imperative to spend them in the most effective way. Omar Mansour ’16 (Salt, Jordan) has been researching factors related to lifetime asthma, which will inform future decisions about how best to address the disease.

Mansour recently took first place in the public health category for his poster explaining that research at the 2015 SACNAS Diversity in STEM conference in Washington, D.C. SACNAS is dedicated to “advancing Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science.” His research was conducted over the summer as part of SUMR, the Summer Undergraduate Minority Research Program, at the University of Pennsylvania. This program researches healthcare services and disparities.

“Siyabonga Ndwandwe ’15 did the program last year and recommended it to me,” says Mansour, who is a biology major with a minor in statistics and a concentration in community and global health. “I’m very interested in epidemiology and biostatistics, and the research at Penn brought together a variety of perspectives, including analysis, health economics, insurance, medicine, and psychology.”

Using data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System phone survey of more than two million respondents, Mansour and his team determined that some races and ethnicities were associated with greater incidence of lifetime asthma. But when he adjusted for sex, age, income, education, smoking status, and body mass index, he learned that “asthma disparities are largely driven by socioeconomic factors that disproportionately affect racial/ethnic minorities.

“While certain ethnic groups experience greater prevalence of asthma, it appears to be related primarily to income and access to healthcare. Any genetic predisposition to asthma becomes of minimal concern when good diet, education, housing and access to healthcare are present,” says Mansour.

Before presenting at SACNAS, Mansour presented at Macalester’s own poster session. Feedback he received there allowed him to refine his poster presentation before the SACNAS conference at which he won the award.

“My statistics and computer science courses really helped me to qualify for the SUMR program at Penn,” says Mansour. “Also, I was comfortable using R.” (R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.)  “My work on TB in Kenya with Professor Christy Hanson was also great preparation.”

Mansour is continuing his asthma research for his capstone in statistics, mentored by statistics professor Victor Addona and biology professor Elizabeth Jansen. Following graduation, he plans to attend graduate school.

December 3 2015

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