California Teacher’s Study facilitates large data research collaboration with online MPH students

User on computer looking at health data

James Lacey

Principal Investigator, California Teachers Study Director, Division of Health Analytics within the Department of Computational and Quantitative Medicine at Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope

October 23, 2024

The California Teachers Study (CTS) is a large, multi-institutional, statewide cohort study established in the mid-1990s to study factors influencing women’s health among active and retired female school teachers and administrators in California. Dr. Jim Lacey is the Principal Investigator of the CTS and a University of Michigan School of Public Health alum (‘95, ‘98). Recently, Lacey described the collaboration with Michigan Public Health and the research in which students have been able to participate. He is excited to be giving back to the School of Public Health by supporting the learning of current students through remote research opportunities. 

It’s a question I hear frequently as part of the California Teachers Study team:  “What are you doing to facilitate the use of your cohort by even more researchers?” 

The California Teachers Study possesses a massive amount of high-quality data—much more data than we could ever analyze individually. This cohort study includes over 133,000 adult women who have been followed continuously since 1995. The combination of survey data & biospecimens provided by participants; data linkages for cancer, hospitalization, and mortality endpoints; and broad collection of linked environmental data can support a wide range of hypothesis-driven research on women’s health. 

Part of what makes the California Teachers Study unique is our approach to data-sharing and collaboration: we’re the first long-running cohort study to adopt the NCI’s Cancer Research Data Commons approach. The team stores our data and conducts analyses in a secure and collaborative cloud environment that enables researchers to work together regardless of their physical location. 

With the adoption of this data commons approach, collaborative research has become so much easier. More and more, investigators who had never used the CTS started coming to us with great ideas that we were thrilled to help facilitate. In summer of 2022 when I saw an email from the school’s Online MPH program asking for Michigan Public Health alumni partners to help current students with their research, we jumped at the chance to participate. The CTS dataset is perfect for student collaboration because of its size: there are so many research questions that can be explored.

Student Collaboration 

In each of the last 2 years, students in the Online MPH program working on their Applied Practice Experience capstone project (APEx) have used CTS data for their projects—including five students in Fall 2023 who simultaneously worked on the CTS. Their projects have spanned diverse topics, including COVID mortality, healthcare utilization among sexual and gender minorities, urban-rural disparities in health outcomes, job strain, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Four APEx projects by online MPH students based on CTS data were recently published on The Pursuit blog:

Our collaboration with students entails not only providing access to the CTS dataset but also providing mentorship throughout the project. The CTS team, along with students’ instructors, serves as project advisors. We guide students in finding projects that engage their interests in the beginning and continue to meet with them weekly to work through the research process, troubleshoot issues, give feedback, and sometimes encourage them to take their research beyond the project. 

“Working with the APEx students has been a true highlight the last two years,” says Kristen Savage, Senior Research Study Program Manager. “Over just a few months, APEx students get to take a research question from the planning stage all the way through data analysis and generating results. As someone who benefited so much from hands-on learning during my own MPH, it’s fun to be on the other side and support students as they explore cohort research.”  

The California Teachers Study – APEx collaboration is one our team is eager to continue. Cohorts like the Teachers Study are designed to last for decades. I was just beginning my PhD program at Michigan Public Health when the Study began, in 1995. Now, as a PI of the Study, it’s my responsibility to be a good and generous steward of these resources. From my first days at UM-SPH, Epidemiology faculty like Dr. Sioban Harlow, Dr. MaryFran Sowers, Dr.  Hunein Maassab, and Dr. David Schottenfeld, who became my PhD advisor, were all so incredibly welcoming & supportive. We now have a chance to do the same, and it’s been a great experience.

About the author

James LaceyJames Lacey is the principal investigator of the California Teacher's Study and a University of Michigan School of Public Health alum (‘95, ‘98). His recent work as a collaborator and mentor to Online MPH students working on their APEx projects projects based on CTS data has helped students learn valuable data analytics skills and discover their research interests. He is excited to continue giving back to the University of Michigan School of Public health through offering remote research opportunities.

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