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
- 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.
- 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; : . PubMed PMID:37945903 .
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. medRxiv 2023; : . PubMed PMID:37292833 PubMed Central PMC10246022.
- Drouet, DE, Liu, S, Crawford, DC. Assessment of multi-population polygenic risk scores for lipid traits in African Americans. PeerJ 2023; 11 : e14910. PubMed PMID:37214096 PubMed Central PMC10198155.
- Cruz, LA, Cooke Bailey, JN, Crawford, DC. Importance of Diversity in Precision Medicine: Generalizability of Genetic Associations Across Ancestry Groups Toward Better Identification of Disease Susceptibility Variants. Annu Rev Biomed Data Sci 2023; 6 : 339-356. PubMed PMID:37196357 .
- Nealon, CL, Halladay, CW, Gorman, BR, Simpson, P, Roncone, DP, Canania, RL, Anthony, SA, Sawicki Rogers, LR, Leber, JN, Dougherty, JM et al.. Association Between Fuchs Endothelial Corneal Dystrophy, Diabetes Mellitus, and Multimorbidity. Cornea 2023; 42 (9): 1140-1149. PubMed PMID:37170406 PubMed Central PMC10523841.
- Chen, F, Madduri, RK, Rodriguez, AA, Darst, BF, Chou, A, Sheng, X, Wang, A, Shen, J, Saunders, EJ, Rhie, SK et al.. Evidence of Novel Susceptibility Variants for Prostate Cancer and a Multiancestry Polygenic Risk Score Associated with Aggressive Disease in Men of African Ancestry. Eur Urol 2023; 84 (1): 13-21. PubMed PMID:36872133 PubMed Central PMC10424812.
- 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 PubMed Central PMC9997528.
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 […]

eMERGE Phenome-Wide Association Study (PheWAS) identifies clinical associations and pleiotropy for stop-gain variants.
Verma A, Verma SS, Pendergrass SA, Crawford DC, Crosslin DR, Kuivaniemi H, Bush WS, Bradford Y, Kullo I, Bielinski SJ, Li R, Denny JC, Peissig P, Hebbring S, De Andrade M, Ritchie MD, Tromp G,. We explored premature stop-gain variants to test the hypothesis that variants, which are likely to have a consequence on protein […]

Genetic variation among 82 pharmacogenes: The PGRNseq data from the eMERGE network.
Bush WS, Crosslin DR, Owusu-Obeng A, Wallace J, Almoguera B, Basford MA, Bielinski SJ, Carrell DS, Connolly JJ, Crawford D, Doheny KF, Gallego CJ, Gordon AS, Keating B, Kirby J, Kitchner T, Manzi S, Mejia AR, Pan V, Perry CL, Peterson JF, Prows CA, Ralston J, Scott SA, Scrol A, Smith M, Stallings SC, Veldhuizen […]

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 […]