Bio

I’m a social epidemiologist and public health researcher specializing in data science for causal inference. I authored the thesis Child Development Among Ecuadorian Children Aged Three to Five Born from Intended and Unintended Pregnancies: A Health Equity Analysis.

I completed my Master of Science in Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia. I also hold a Master of Public Policy and Global Affairs from UBC, complemented by my Medical Doctor degree from Universidad Tecnológica Equinoccial in Quito, Ecuador. My professional development spans biostatistics, data science, and research methodologies, with certifications from Johns Hopkins University, Stanford, and Vanderbilt.

I currently work as a Data Analyst at Simon Fraser University. I lead data management and analysis initiatives for multiple research projects focusing on health equity and public health outcomes, particularly among marginalized communities. My role involves extensive collaboration with interdisciplinary teams, ensuring the integrity and accuracy of data processes, and contributing to high-impact publications and policy recommendations.

As part of my service to the profession, I’ve been a reviewer for top (Q1) journals such as the American Journal of Public Health, European Heart Journal, BMC Public Health, JMIR, and others. I worked as a technical translator in the past and have volunteered since as a screener for systematic reviews or collaborating in forward or backward translation for validated instruments, like the 7C vaccination readiness questionnaire.

I have consulted for UrbanDesign4Health (2022-2023), Freedom House (2015-2017), Internews (2019), and ChildFund (2020).

Key research interests

  • Social Epidemiology: trend analysis, health disparities, social determinants of health, intersectionality, mental health in marginalized populations.
  • Causal Inference: application of advanced statistical methods, identifying causal relationships in public health, mediation analysis, directed acyclic graphs (DAGs)
  • Public Health Data Science: big data in public health, data management and visualization, machine learning applications in epidemiology, reproducible research practices
  • Open Science: open-access publishing, transparency in research, collaborative research platforms, data sharing and ethics

Teaching

During my graduate studies, I served as a Teaching Assistant for SPPH581Y (Winter 2020), where I supported Drs. Peter Berman and Milind Kandlikar in guiding students through the complexities of how institutional, organizational, governance, and political factors influenced national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the undergraduate level, I was involved in curriculum development for SPPH 481D: Global Health Policy and Systems in Spring 2022, under the supervision of Dr. Veena Sriram and Dr. Peter Berman. Additionally, I served as an Instructor at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Universidad UTE in Ecuador, where I taught Problem-Based Learning from 2017 to 2018, engaging approximately 150 students.

Selected papers

Salway, T., Delgado-Ron J.A., Rich A.J., Dharma, C., Baams L., & Fish, J. (2024). Trends in mental health and smoking disparities between sexual minority and heterosexual adults in Canada, 2003-2020. SSM - Population Health 27, 101976. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2024.101697.

Delgado-Ron, J. A., Jeyabalan, T., Watt, S., & Salway, T. (2024). Mitigating invalid data bias in the estimation of sexual orientation disparities in a survey of youth in US and Canada. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14111 [In press].

Delgado-Ron, J. A., López-Jaramillo, P., & Karim, M. E. (2022). Sodium intake and high blood pressure among adults on caloric deficit: a multi-year cross-sectional analysis of the US population, 2007–2018. Journal of Human Hypertension 36, 968–975. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41371-021-00614-4

Delgado-Ron, J. A., Adhikari, B., Van den Bosch, M., Dummer, T., Hong, A., Sandhu, J., … & Frank, L. D. (2021). Community design and hypertension: Walkability and park access relationships with cardiovascular health. International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, 237, 113820. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheh.2021.113820

Personal life

I live in Ottawa, ON, with my wife, Andrea, and my daughter, Alice. I was born in Quito, Ecuador, but spent my formative years in Vancouver, BC. I have been a permanent resident of Canada since 2029.

In my free time, I enjoy reading (mostly non-fiction graphic novels), biking, and playing chess (I have a 1600 chess.com rating). I write as a hobby and have won third place in a national contest of really short stories (my micro tales have been included in a couple of anthologies). I was first published in English in “Writing in the Time of COVID.”

R Code Stories

I created this website to share pieces of code with a story: