Clinical/Research Interests

Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Ph.D., is a professor of public health sciences. She received her B.A. degree in mathematics, M.A. in biostatistics, and Ph.D. and M.P.H. in epidemiology from UC Berkeley. After 12 years on the faculty at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, she returned to California to join UC Davis.

Her research interests are in environmental exposures involving metals, pesticides, PCBs and air pollution; pregnancy outcomes--specifically, spontaneous abortion, fetal growth and early child development; and epidemiologic methods--notably, left truncation in survival analysis, the "healthy worker survivor bias," timing problems, and use of epidemiologic data in quantitative risk assessment.

Hertz-Picciotto chaired the U.S. Institute of Medicine-National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Agent Orange and other Herbicides in 2000 and 2002. She wrote the chapter "Environmental Epidemiology" in the textbook Modern Epidemiology by Rothman and Greenland, and currently serves on editorial boards for the American Journal of Epidemiology, Environmental Health Perspectives, and Epidemiology. She has served on scientific advisory boards for the state of California, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Toxicology Program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). She was president of the international Society for Environmental Epidemiology in 2001-2002, and is now president-elect of the Society for Epidemiologic Research. Hertz-Picciotto directed the program in Reproductive Epidemiology at UNC Chapel Hill and is the deputy director of the Children's Center for Environmental Health at UC Davis, focused on autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. She has taught courses on four continents, was dissertation adviser for 17 doctoral students--four of whom won prizes for work conducted as doctoral students--and was mentor for three dozen other Ph.D. students. She does not see patients.

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Select Recent Publications:

Harville EW, Schramm M, Watt-Morse M, Chantala K, Anderson JJB, Hertz-Picciotto I (2004). Calcium intake during pregnancy among white and African-American pregnant women in the U.S. J Amer Coll Nutr 23(1):43-50.

Richardson DB, Wing S, Lorey F, Hertz-Picciotto I (2004). Adult Hemoglobin Levels at Birth and Risk of SIDS. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 158:366-371.

Dole N, Savitz DA, Siega-Riz AM, Hertz-Picciotto I, McMahon M, Buekens P (2004). Psychosocial factors and preterm birth among African-American and White women in central North Carolina. Amer J Pub Health 94:1358-1365.

O'Neill MS, Loomis D, Borja-Aburto VH, Gold D, Hertz-Picciotto I, Castillejos M (2004). Do associations between airborne particles and daily mortality in Mexico City differ by measurement method, region, or modeling strategy? J Expos Anal Environ Epi 14(6):429-39.

Promislow JHE, Hertz-Picciotto I, Schramm M, Watt-Morse M, Anderson JJB (2004). Bedrest and other determinants of bone loss during pregnancy. Amer J Obstet Gynecol 191(4):1077-83.

van Wijngaarden E, Hertz-Picciotto I, Schulz M (2004). A simple approach to performing quantitative cancer risk assessment using published results from occupational epidemiology studies. Science of the Total Environment 332(1-3):81-7.

Joines JD, Hertz-Picciotto I, Carey TS, Gesler W, Suchindran C (2003). A spatial analysis of county-level variation in hospitalization rates for low back problems in North Carolina. Social Science & Medicine 56(12):2541-2553.

Longnecker MP, Wolff MS, Gladen BC, Brock JW, Grandjean P, Jacobson JL, Korrick SA, Rogan WJ, Weisglas-Kuperus N, Hertz-Picciotto I, Ayotte P, Stewart P, Winneke G, Charles MJ, Jacobson SW, Dewailly E, Boersma R, Altshul LM, Heinzow B, Jensen AA (2003). Comparison of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) levels across studies of human neurodevelopment. Environ Health Persp 111:65-70.

Dole N, Savitz DA, Hertz-Picciotto I, Siega-Riz AM, McMahon MJ, Buekens P (2003). Maternal stress and preterm birth. Amer J Epidemiol 157:14-24.

Hertz-Picciotto I, Trnovec T, Ko an T, Charles MJ, i nar P, Langer P, Sov ikova E, James R (2003). PCB's and early childhood development in Slovakia: Study design and background. Fresenius Environmental Bulletin 12:208-214.