Chronic disease epidemiology; public health surveillance; Geographic Information System (GIS); cartography; community-based research; program evaluation; health disparities; Appalachian region; rural health; screening; prevention

Dr. Lengerich is an epidemiologist whose research interests include the effect of sociodemographic, behavioral, and community risk factors on chronic disease; community-based participatory research; and small area analysis and mapping of spatially referenced data. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Association for Prevention Teaching and Research, Association of American Medical Colleges, Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Lance Armstrong Foundation. Dr. Lengerich is principal investigator for the Northern Appalachia Cancer Network, a community-academic partnership begun in 1992 to reduce cancer health disparities in rural communities of Pennsylvania and New York. The NACN has published results of community-based interventions that increased mammography use, cancer knowledge, and colorectal cancer survivorship. He has led independent investigations that developed a model, web-based and interactive, state cancer atlas and an open-source, Java-based, geospatial analytic toolkit for epidemiologists and statisticians. Prior to joining the faculty of Penn State University in 1998, Dr. Lengerich was a chronic disease epidemiologist for the state of North Carolina and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He has served on state and national committees, including the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics from 2000 to 2004. Dr. Lengerich teaches resident and on-line graduate courses in research methods for epidemiology, public health surveillance, homeland security, and health disparities. Dr. Lengerich has over 50 publications in the peer-reviewed literature.