Faculty Facilitator: Tom Kirchner, PhD, MS
NYU mHealth is a research group within the NYU School of Global Public Health. NYU mHealth works to leverage the power of cellphones to collect data about neighborhoods and experiences, including exposure to different risk and protective factors such as tobacco point-of-sale. Furthermore, the team also works to understand health behaviors as they occur within residents’ day-to-day routine. This data and analysis are used to understand decision-making about the pros and cons of certain behaviors, attitudes about the built environment, and ultimately the way outcomes are affected by the neighborhoods in which people live or spend a substantial amount of their time.
The NYU mHealth group is comprised of a transdisciplinary, highly collaborative team that includes experts in applied public health research, geographic information systems, mobile data collection, and computationally intensive (“big”) data analytics, among other topics. Members of the lab are working with a wide range of datasets from open platforms, as well as geolocation mobility data, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data, and very large photographic imagery data from street-level collection systems and smart wearable cameras.
In the Lab, researchers and students apply mHealth tools to explore geospatial systems, technology, research, and community advocacy. Students at all levels are encouraged to contact us about opportunities, as well as check out the student-led NYU Youthmappers club. Dr. Kirchner is accepting doctoral students for the fall. For more information please email him at tomkirchner@nyu.edu.