Biostatistics Seminar Series: Long-Term Cognitive Effects of Work Schedules and Intervening Pathways

October 20
12-12:45pm
708 Broadway, Room 801 / Online

Hosted by the GPH Department of Biostatistics

Work schedules regulate the circadian rhythm by dictating when and how long a person stays awake within the 24 hours of a day. While experimental evidence suggests circadian misalignment causes short-term cognitive dysfunctions, there is a lack of epidemiological evidence on the long-term cognitive consequences of non-day shifts, a potent trigger of circadian disruption.

In this seminar, Gawon Cho will discuss her recent work using a potential outcomes framework to examine differences in various cognitive faculties over 20 years between workers with a history of day, evening, night, and long shifts. Importantly, she will also present her work exploring mediating pathways. Evidence on the long-term cognitive effects of work schedules is necessary to inform preventive interventions and policies for improving the health of workers with non-standard shifts.

About the Speaker:
Gawon Cho is a PhD candidate in Public Health at the NYU School of Global Public Health. Her work aims to understand long-term risk and resilience in cognitive aging by combining knowledge from Social Epidemiology, Biomedical sciences, and Biostatistics. Her dissertation investigates the long-term impact of different occupational shifts on cognitive performance and intervening physiological and behavioral pathways.