DANA C. CRAWFORD, PHD

Associate Director for Community and Population Research & Outreach

Dana Craw­ford, PhD, is Pro­fes­sor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and Associate Director for Community and Population Research & Outreach 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 PhD 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 data to large-scale epi­demi­o­logic and clin­i­cal cohorts to bet­ter under­stand human genotype-phenotype asso­ci­a­tions.

Recent Publications

  1. Liu, S, Bush, WS, Akinyemi, RO, Byrd, GS, Caban-Holt, AM, Rajabli, F, Reitz, C, Kunkle, BW, Tosto, G, Vance, JM et al.. Alzheimer disease is (sometimes) highly heritable: Drivers of variation in heritability estimates for binary traits, a systematic review. medRxiv 2025; : . PubMed PMID:40343016 PubMed Central PMC12060970.
  2. Liu, S, Gunzler, DD, Gunzler, SA, Crawford, DC, Briggs, FBS. Exploring the early drivers of pain in Parkinson's disease. Sci Rep 2025; 15 (1): 6212. PubMed PMID:39979466 PubMed Central PMC11842595.
  3. Gonzalez-Vicente, A, Crawford, DC, Bush, WS, Wu, Z, Bruggeman, LA, Nair, V, Eichinger, F, Wessely, O, Kretzler, M, O'Toole, JF et al.. Analysis of Glomerular Transcriptomes from Nephrotic Patients Suggest APOL1 Risk Variants Impact Parietal Epithelial Cells. medRxiv 2024; : . PubMed PMID:39830251 PubMed Central PMC11741451.
  4. Gorman, BR, Voloudakis, G, Igo, RP Jr, Kinzy, T, Halladay, CW, Bigdeli, TB, Zeng, B, Venkatesh, S, Cooke Bailey, JN, Crawford, DC et al.. Genome-wide association analyses identify distinct genetic architectures for age-related macular degeneration across ancestries. Nat Genet 2024; 56 (12): 2659-2671. PubMed PMID:39623103 .
  5. Jafari, E, Blackman, MH, Karnes, JH, Van Driest, SL, Crawford, DC, Choi, L, McDonough, CW. Using electronic health records for clinical pharmacology research: Challenges and considerations. Clin Transl Sci 2024; 17 (7): e13871. PubMed PMID:38943244 PubMed Central PMC11213823.
  6. Ferar, K, Hall, TO, Crawford, DC, Rowley, R, Satterfield, BA, Li, R, Gragert, L, Karlson, EW, de Andrade, M, Kullo, IJ et al.. Author Correction: Genetic variation in the human leukocyte antigen region confers susceptibility to Clostridioides difficile infection. Sci Rep 2023; 13 (1): 19972. PubMed PMID:37968452 PubMed Central PMC10652012.
  7. Wang, A, Shen, J, Rodriguez, AA, Saunders, EJ, Chen, F, Janivara, R, Darst, BF, Sheng, X, Xu, Y, Chou, AJ et al.. Characterizing prostate cancer risk through multi-ancestry genome-wide discovery of 187 novel risk variants. Nat Genet 2023; 55 (12): 2065-2074. PubMed PMID:37945903 PubMed Central PMC10841479.
  8. Ferar, K, Hall, TO, Crawford, DC, Rowley, R, Satterfield, BA, Li, R, Gragert, L, Karlson, EW, de Andrade, M, Kullo, IJ et al.. Genetic variation in the human leukocyte antigen region confers susceptibility to Clostridioides difficile infection. Sci Rep 2023; 13 (1): 18532. PubMed PMID:37898691 PubMed Central PMC10613277.
  9. Victoria-Castro, AM, Corona-Villalobos, CP, Xu, AY, Onul, I, Huynh, C, Chen, SW, Ugwuowo, U, Sarkisova, N, Dighe, AL, Blank, KN et al.. Participant Experience with Protocol Research Kidney Biopsies in the Kidney Precision Medicine Project. Clin J Am Soc Nephrol 2024; 19 (2): 202-212. PubMed PMID:37871973 PubMed Central PMC10861112.
  10. Darst, BF, Shen, J, Madduri, RK, Rodriguez, AA, Xiao, Y, Sheng, X, Saunders, EJ, Dadaev, T, Brook, MN, Hoffmann, TJ et al.. Evaluating approaches for constructing polygenic risk scores for prostate cancer in men of African and European ancestry. Am J Hum Genet 2023; 110 (7): 1200-1206. PubMed PMID:37311464 PubMed Central PMC10357473.
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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, […]