Mari Armstrong-Hough | NYU School of Global Public Health

Mari Armstrong-Hough

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Associate Professor of Social & Behavioral Sciences and Epidemiology

Dr. Mari Armstrong-Hough is Associate Professor in the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences and in the Department of Epidemiology. She is a medical sociologist and epidemiologist of respiratory disease.

Dr. Armstrong-Hough’s global health research examines the epidemiologic interfaces among tuberculosis (TB), HIV, and non-communicable diseases. Combining training in epidemiology and sociology, her work develops and evaluates interventions to increase early case-finding, status awareness, and linkage to care in high-burden settings like Uganda and South Africa. She has published on predictors of evaluation for TB among high-risk groups, novel approaches to active case-finding for TB and HIV, the ways that providers and patients imagine and communicate risk for respiratory infection, and the availability of essential medicines in settings with double burdens of infectious and non-communicable disease. Her first book, Biomedicalization and the Practice of Culture: Globalization and Type 2 Diabetes in the United States and Japan (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), examined how the practice and experience of global evidence-based medicine is shaped by local cultural repertoires. Her recent work has appeared in the Journal of AIDS, International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, and the The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. She also co-directs the NIH-funded Mixed-Methods Fellowship of the Pulmonary Complications of AIDS Research Training Program at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. She is PI of a prospective cohort study of patients initiating treatment for pulmonary TB in Uganda and a co-investigator on NIH-funded studies of contact tracing for TB.

Dr. Armstrong-Hough’s US-based research examines racial and ethnic disparities in survival of respiratory failure and seeks to develop interventions to ensure that all patients with respiratory failure receive evidence-based care. Approximately 750,000 Americans die each year from respiratory failure, and its 2.5 million survivors experience poor physical function and quality of life persisting five years after discharge. Minority patients are significantly less likely to survive respiratory failure, with up to twice the odds of death as non-Hispanic White patients. Dr. Armstrong-Hough co-PIs the Promoting Equity via Changes In Practice for Respiratory Failure (PRECIPICE) studies, which use large-scale, multicenter data from US ICUs to identify care processes associated with inequities in survival and long-term outcomes. Early work related to these studies has been accepted to Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

Before coming to NYU, Dr. Armstrong-Hough was an Associate Research Scientist in Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale School of Public Health. She previously taught at Davidson College, Meiji University in Tokyo, and Duke University. She has conducted fieldwork in the United States, Japan, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Nepal and is a recipient of the Robert E. Leet and Clara Guthrie Patterson Trust Mentored Research Award in Clinical, Health Services and Policy Research.

Education

BA, Sociology, History, and Political Science, University of Wisconsin–Madison

MA, East Asian Studies, Duke University

PhD, Sociology, Duke University

Postdoctoral MPH, Applied Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Yale

Publications

Implementing mhealth interventions in a resource-constrained setting: Case study from Uganda

Mobile Health Technologies May Be Acceptable Tools for Providing Social Support to Tuberculosis Patients in Rural Uganda: A Parallel Mixed-Method Study

Predictors of evaluation in child contacts of TB patients

Prevalence, associated factors and perspectives of HIV testing among men in Uganda

Sustainability of the streamlined ART (START-ART) implementation intervention strategy among ART-eligible adult patients in HIV clinics in public health centers in Uganda: a mixed methods study

Variation in the availability and cost of essential medicines for non-communicable diseases in Uganda: A descriptive time series analysis

Digital monitoring technologies could enhance tuberculosis medication adherence in Uganda: Mixed methods study

Home-based tuberculosis contact investigation in uganda: A household randomised trial

'Something so hard': A mixed-methods study of home sputum collection for tuberculosis contact investigation in Uganda

ADHD in Japan: A sociological perspective

Biomedicalization and the practice of culture: globalization and type 2 diabetes in the United States and Japan

Brief Report: "Give Me Some Time": Facilitators of and Barriers to Uptake of Home-Based HIV Testing During Household Contact Investigation for Tuberculosis in Kampala, Uganda: Facilitators of and barriers to uptake of home-based HIV testing during househo

Conformity and communal decision-making: First-tester effects on acceptance of home-based HIV counseling and testing in Uganda

Disparities in availability of essential medicines to treat non-communicable diseases in Uganda: A poisson analysis using the service availability and readiness assessment

Feasibility, acceptability, and adoption of digital fingerprinting during contact investigation for tuberculosis in Kampala, Uganda: A parallel-convergent mixed-methods analysis

Integrating home HIV counselling and testing into household TB contact investigation: a mixed-methods study

Patterns of usage and preferences of users for tuberculosis-related text messages and voice calls in Uganda

Social determinants of tuberculosis evaluation among household contacts: a secondary analysis

Text messages sent to household tuberculosis contacts in Kampala, Uganda: Process evaluation

Disparities in Availability of Essential Medicines to Treat Non-communicable Diseases in Uganda: A Cross-sectional Poisson Analysis Using the 2013 Service Availability and Readiness Assessment