DANA C. CRAWFORD, PHD
Associate Director for Population and Diversity Research
Dana Crawford, PhD, is Professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and Associate Director for Population and Diversity Research in the Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology. She also has a secondary appointment in the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences. Dr. Crawford received her Ph.D. at Emory University in genetics and molecular biology in 2000 and then trained as a post-doctoral fellow as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2000–2002) and as a senior fellow at the University of Washington’s Department of Genome Sciences (2002–2006). Prior to her most current position, Dr. Crawford spent eight years as tenure-track faculty in the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics and Investigator in the Center for Human Genetics Research at Vanderbilt University. As a genetic epidemiologist at CWRU, Dr. Crawford’s broad research interests include applying genetic variation data to large-scale epidemiologic and clinical cohorts to better understand human genotype-phenotype associations with an emphasis on diverse populations.
Recent Publications
- Waksmunski, AR, Kinzy, TG, Cruz, LA, Nealon, CL, Halladay, CW, Anthony, SA, Greenberg, PB, Sullivan, JM, Wu, WC, Iyengar, SK et al.. Diversity is key for cross-ancestry transferability of glaucoma genetic risk scores in Hispanic Veterans in the Million Veteran Program. Pac Symp Biocomput 2023; 28 : 413-424. PubMed PMID:36540996 .
- Liu, J, Nair, V, Zhao, YY, Chang, DY, Limonte, C, Bansal, N, Fermin, D, Eichinger, F, Tanner, EC, Bellovich, KA et al.. Multi-Scalar Data Integration Links Glomerular Angiopoietin-Tie Signaling Pathway Activation With Progression of Diabetic Kidney Disease. Diabetes 2022; 71 (12): 2664-2676. PubMed PMID:36331122 PubMed Central PMC9750948.
- Yang, HT, Crawford, DC, Abazeed, ME. Editorial: Translating clinical genomics and health informatics into precision oncology. Front Genet 2022; 13 : 1029212. PubMed PMID:36263433 PubMed Central PMC9574329.
- Lutnick, B, Manthey, D, Becker, JU, Ginley, B, Moos, K, Zuckerman, JE, Rodrigues, L, Gallan, AJ, Barisoni, L, Alpers, CE et al.. A user-friendly tool for cloud-based whole slide image segmentation with examples from renal histopathology. Commun Med (Lond) 2022; 2 : 105. PubMed PMID:35996627 PubMed Central PMC9391340.
- Liu, S, Bush, WS, Miskimen, K, Gonzalez-Vicente, A, Bailey, JNC, Konidari, I, McCauley, JL, Sedor, JR, O'Toole, JF, Crawford, DC et al.. T-cell receptor diversity in minimal change disease in the NEPTUNE study. Pediatr Nephrol 2022; : . PubMed PMID:35943576 .
- Waksmunski, AR, Kinzy, TG, Cruz, LA, Nealon, CL, Halladay, CW, Simpson, P, Canania, RL, Anthony, SA, Roncone, DP, Sawicki Rogers, L et al.. Glaucoma Genetic Risk Scores in the Million Veteran Program. Ophthalmology 2022; 129 (11): 1263-1274. PubMed PMID:35718050 .
- Verma, A, Tsao, NL, Thomann, LO, Ho, YL, Iyengar, SK, Luoh, SW, Carr, R, Crawford, DC, Efird, JT, Huffman, JE et al.. A Phenome-Wide Association Study of genes associated with COVID-19 severity reveals shared genetics with complex diseases in the Million Veteran Program. PLoS Genet 2022; 18 (4): e1010113. PubMed PMID:35482673 PubMed Central PMC9049369.
- Menon, R, Bomback, AS, Lake, BB, Stutzke, C, Grewenow, SM, Menez, S, D'Agati, VD, Jain, S, Kidney Precision Medicine Project. Integrated single-cell sequencing and histopathological analyses reveal diverse injury and repair responses in a participant with acute kidney injury: a clinical-molecular-pathologic correlation. Kidney Int 2022; 101 (6): 1116-1125. PubMed PMID:35339536 PubMed Central PMC9769136.
- Peloso, GM, Tcheandjieu, C, McGeary, JE, Posner, DC, Ho, YL, Zhou, JJ, Hilliard, AT, Joseph, J, O'Donnell, CJ, Efird, JT et al.. Genetic Loci Associated With COVID-19 Positivity and Hospitalization in White, Black, and Hispanic Veterans of the VA Million Veteran Program. Front Genet 2021; 12 : 777076. PubMed PMID:35222515 PubMed Central PMC8864634.
- Jin, B, Capra, JA, Benchek, P, Wheeler, N, Naj, AC, Hamilton-Nelson, KL, Farrell, JJ, Leung, YY, Kunkle, B, Vadarajan, B et al.. An association test of the spatial distribution of rare missense variants within protein structures identifies Alzheimer's disease-related patterns. Genome Res 2022; 32 (4): 778-790. PubMed PMID:35210353 PubMed Central PMC8997344.
Featured Publications

Using Electronic Health Records to Generate Phenotypes for Research
Sarah A. Pendergrass and Dana C. Crawford Electronic health records contain patient-level data collected during and for clinical care. Data within the electronic health record include diagnostic billing codes, procedure codes, vital signs, laboratory test results, clinical imaging, and physician notes. With repeated clinic visits, these data are longitudinal, providing important information on disease development, […]

Local genetic ancestry in CDKN2B-AS1 is associated with primary open-angle glaucoma in an African American cohort extracted from de-identified electronic health records.
Restrepo NA, Laper S, Farber-Eger E, Crawford DC. Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness in developed countries. Primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG), the most prevalent clinical subtype of glaucoma in the United States, affects African Americans at a higher rate compared with European Americans. Risk factors identified for POAG include increased age and family history, […]

Reducing Clinical Noise for Body Mass Index Measures Due to Unit and Transcription Errors in the Electronic Health Record.
Goodloe R, Farber-Eger E, Boston J, Crawford DC, Bush WS,. Body mass index (BMI) is an important outcome and covariate adjustment for many clinical association studies. Accurate assessment of BMI, therefore, is a critical part of many study designs. Electronic health records (EHRs) are a growing source of clinical data for research purposes, and have […]

Fine-mapping of lipid regions in global populations discovers ethnic-specific signals and refines previously identified lipid loci.
Zubair N, Graff M, Luis Ambite J, Bush WS, Kichaev G, Lu Y, Manichaikul A, Sheu WH, Absher D, Assimes TL, Bielinski SJ, Bottinger EP, Buzkova P, Chuang LM, Chung RH, Cochran B, Dumitrescu L, Gottesman O, Haessler JW, Haiman C, Heiss G, Hsiung CA, Hung YJ, Hwu CM, Juang JJ, Le Marchand L, Lee […]