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. Cruz, LA, Liu, S, Miskimen, KL, Song, YE, Laux, RA, Lerner, AJ, Lynn, A, Fuzzell, SL, Hochstetler, SD, Konidari, I et al.. Basic Science and Pathogenesis. Alzheimers Dement 2025; 21 Suppl 1 (Suppl 1): e102239. PubMed PMID:41436364 PubMed Central PMC12727213.
  2. Liu, S, Bush, WS, Kunkle, BW, Byrd, GS, Reitz, C, Tosto, G, Vance, JM, Pericak-Vance, M, Haines, JL, Crawford, DC et al.. Basic Science and Pathogenesis. Alzheimers Dement 2025; 21 Suppl 1 (Suppl 1): e102132. PubMed PMID:41436227 PubMed Central PMC12727212.
  3. Rose, C, Bush, WS, Crawford, DC. Public Health. Alzheimers Dement 2025; 21 Suppl 6 (Suppl 6): e101746. PubMed PMID:41434303 PubMed Central PMC12726674.
  4. Miller, AK, Bartlett, J, Pan, C, Lusis, AJ, Crawford, DC, Williams, SM, Buchner, DA. Concordance between male- and female-specific GWAS results helps define underlying genetic architecture of complex traits. Nat Commun 2025; 16 (1): 8695. PubMed PMID:41028716 PubMed Central PMC12485208.
  5. 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. PLoS Genet 2025; 21 (9): e1011701. PubMed PMID:40906820 PubMed Central PMC12419754.
  6. Rose, CM, Bush, WS, Beno, MF, Williams, SM, Haines, JL, Crawford, DC. Institutional Characteristics Associated with Accessing and Sharing EHR Data with the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C). medRxiv 2025; : . PubMed PMID:40657309 PubMed Central PMC12248143.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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 .
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Featured Publications

Trans-ethnic fine-mapping of genetic loci for body mass index in the diverse ancestral populations of the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) Study reveals evidence for multiple signals at established loci.

Fernández-Rhodes L, Gong J, Haessler J, Franceschini N, Graff M, Nishimura KK, Wang Y, Highland HM, Yoneyama S, Bush WS, Goodloe R, Ritchie MD, Crawford D, Gross M, Fornage M, Buzkova P, Tao R, Isasi C, Avilés-Santa L, Daviglus M, Mackey RH, Houston D, Gu CC, Ehret G, Nguyen KH, Lewis CE, Leppert M, Irvin […]

Towards a phenome-wide catalog of human clinical traits impacted by genetic ancestry.

Dumitrescu L, Restrepo NA, Goodloe R, Boston J, Farber-Eger E, Pendergrass SA, Bush WS, Crawford DC,. Racial/ethnic differences for commonly measured clinical variables are well documented, and it has been postulated that population-specific genetic factors may play a role. The genetic heterogeneity of admixed populations, such as African Americans, provides a unique opportunity to identify […]