Mari Armstrong-Hough

Associate Professor of Social & Behavioral Sciences and Epidemiology

Professional overview

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

Publications

Depression and associated factors among HIV-positive smokers receiving care at HIV outpatient clinics in Vietnam: A cross-sectional analysis

Ethnic Disparities in Deep Sedation of Patients with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome in the United States: Secondary Analysis of a Multicenter Randomized Trial

A user-centred implementation strategy for tuberculosis contact investigation in Uganda: protocol for a stepped-wedge, cluster-randomised trial

Associations among past trauma, post-displacement stressors, and mental health outcomes in Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh: A secondary cross-sectional analysis

Clinical Practices Following Train-The-Trainer Trauma Course Completion in Uganda: A Parallel-Convergent Mixed-Methods Study

Disparities among patients with respiratory failure

mHealth to improve implementation of TB contact investigation: a case study from Uganda

Self-care and healthcare seeking practices among patients with hypertension and diabetes in rural Uganda

Adapting a tobacco cessation treatment intervention and implementation strategies to enhance implementation effectiveness and clinical outcomes in the context of HIV care in Vietnam: a case study

Assessing a norming intervention to promote acceptance of HIV testing and reduce stigma during household tuberculosis contact investigation: Protocol for a cluster-randomised trial

Core components of a Community of Practice to improve community health worker performance: a qualitative study

Determinants of testing for HIV among young people in Uganda. A nested, explanatory-sequential study

Factors associated with willingness to use oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in a fisher-folk community in peri-urban Kampala, Uganda

Implementation, interrupted: Identifying and leveraging factors that sustain after a programme interruption

Patient preferences for facility-based management of hypertension and diabetes in rural Uganda: A discrete choice experiment

Perceptions, preferences, and experiences of tuberculosis education and counselling among patients and providers in Kampala, Uganda: A qualitative study

Saliva-based methods for SARS-CoV-2 testing in low-and middle-income countries

Theory-Informed Design of a Tailored Strategy for Implementing Household TB Contact Investigation in Uganda

An emerging syndemic of smoking and cardiopulmonary diseases in people living with HIV in Africa

Availability, functionality and access of blood pressure machines at the points of care in public primary care facilities in Tororo district, Uganda

Gaps in TB preventive therapy for persons initiating antiretroviral therapy in Uganda: an explanatory sequential cascade analysis

Patient experiences of switching from Efavirenz- to Dolutegravir-based antiretroviral therapy: a qualitative study in Uganda

Risk, race, and structural racism

Social support for self-care: Patient strategies for managing diabetes and hypertension in rural uganda

Experiences and intentions of Ugandan household tuberculosis contacts receiving test results via text message: An exploratory study