Senior Scientific Researcher of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Miguel Servet I Award, Carlos III Institute of Health
Ibs.Granada, Andalusian School of Public Health.
Cuesta del Observatorio, 4, 18080
Granada, Spain
Visiting Scientist
Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Email mluquefe@hsph.harvard.edu
Research Interests
I received my Ph.D. in Preventive Medicine (Epidemiology) and Public Health, awarded with Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Granada (UGR, Spain) and the ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium). Also, I hold an MSc in Biostatistics from the University of Newcastle, Australia, an MSc in Epidemiology from the ULB and an MPH from the UGR. After the completion of my Ph.D. in 2010, I moved to the Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Research (University of Cape Town) as a postdoctoral fellow for two years. Afterwards, I moved to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Department of Epidemiology), where I specialized in perinatal epidemiology and epidemiologic methods from 2012 to 2015. I have also been trained as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer (EIS), and I worked as a field epidemiologist for several years in different African countries with Médecins Sans Frontières and GOARN-WHO during the Cholera epidemic in Haiti, 2010. In Europe, I worked as an epidemiologist for the local government of the city of Brussels identifying sociodemographic and economic determinants of health inequalities.
My research interests lie principally, but not exclusively in the field of epidemiologic methods aiming to assess determinants of social inequalities in population-based health outcomes and cancer epidemiology with a specific interest in causal inference and translational epidemiology. At UCT, I used marginal structural models applied to large longitudinal data from Khayelitsha (HIV-Cohort) to assess the effectiveness of an observational, nonrandomized intervention. At Harvard, I used fixed effects methods in the context of the analysis of the components of the variance and within siblings’ design (observational cross-over) to evaluate the effect of a small fetoplacental ratio at birth on the risk of delivering a small for gestational age infant. Recently, using multilevel analysis, I studied the contextual effect of regional unemployment on stillbirth by geographical regions in Spain as a complement to previous studies where I evaluated the multiplicative effect of maternal education and ethnicity on the risk of delivering a stillborn.
Currently, I am studying the impact of the 2009 economic crisis on stillbirth rates among African immigrant women in Spain and evaluating the best framework to extract cancer patient comorbidity information from population-based administrative records. I am developing in collaboration with colleagues from the Cancer Survival Group, data-adaptive methods for model selection and evaluation based on cross-validation techniques (cvAUROC) and applying advanced causal inference methods such as targeted maximum likelihood estimation (TMLE) to study cancer outcomes.
Selected Publications
- Luque-Fernandez MA, Thomas A, Gelaye B, Racape J, Sanchez MJ, Williams MA. Secular trends in stillbirth by maternal socioeconomic status in Spain 2007-15: a population-based study of 4 million births. Eur J Public Health. 2019 May 23. pii: ckz086. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/ckz086. PubMed PMID: 31121034.
- Luque-Fernandez MA, Schomaker M, Rachet B, Schnitzer ME. Targeted maximum likelihood estimation for a binary treatment: A tutorial. Stat Med. 2018 Apr 23. PubMed.
- Luque-Fernandez MA, Zoega H, Valdimarsdottir U, Williams MA. Deconstructing the smoking-preeclampsia paradox through a counterfactual framework. Eur J Epidemiol. 2016 Mar 14. PubMed.
- Luque-Fernandez MA, Ananth CV, Sanchez SE, Qiu CF, Hernandez-Diaz S, Valdimarsdottir U, Gelaye B, Williams MA. Absence of circadian rhythms of preterm premature rupture of membranes and preterm placental abruption. Ann Epidemiol. 2014 Oct 15;24(12):882-887. PubMed
- Luque-Fernandez MA, Gelaye B, VanderWeele T, Ferre C, Siega-Riz AM, Holzman C,Enquobahrie DA, Dole N, Williams MA. Seasonal variation of 25-hydroxyvitamin D among non-Hispanic black and white pregnant women from three US pregnancy cohorts. Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol. 2014 Mar;28(2):166-76. View in PubMed
- Luque Fernandez MA, Van Cutsem G, Goemaere E, Hilderbrand K, Schomaker M, Mantangana N, Mathee S, Dubula V, Ford N, Hernan MA, Boulle A. Effectiveness of patient adherence groups as a model of care for stable patients on antiretroviral therapy in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa [Internet]. PloS one 2013;8:e56088. PloS one
- Luque Fernandez MA, Schomaker M, Mason PR, Fesselet JF, Baudot Y, Boulle A, Maes P. Elevation and cholera: an epidemiological spatial analysis of the cholera epidemic in Harare, Zimbabwe, 2008-2009. BMC public health 2012;12:442. BioMed Central
- Luque Fernandez MA, Mason PR, Gray H, Bauernfeind A, Fesselet JF, Maes P. Descriptive spatial analysis of the cholera epidemic 2008-2009 in Harare, Zimbabwe: a secondary data analysis. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg 2011;105:38-45. PubMed
- Fernandez MA, Cavanillas AB, de Mateo S. Differences in the reproductive pattern and low birthweight by maternal country of origin in Spain, 1996-2006. European journal of public healthEuropean journal of public health 2011;21:104-8. PubMed
- Fernandez MA, Delchevalerie P, Van Herp M. Accuracy of MUAC in the detection of severe wasting with the new WHO growth standards. Pediatrics 2010;126:e195-201. PubMed