front

I am an epidemiologist working at the Liberty Mutual Research Center for Safety and Health in Hopkinton, MA, USA. My e-mail address is msmail4.sorockg@tsod.lmig.com. My primary work now is in occupational injury epidemiology. Earlier, I did research on falls and fractures in the elderly.

I became interested in injury epidemiology through course work at a school of public health. After completing a case-control study of risk factors for falls among the hospitalized elderly, I was convinced that traditional epidemiologic approaches could be used to understand the causes of injuries.

I am excited about this research because I can see after nearly 20 years, that the approach works (certainly for falls among the elderly) and can be applied to other injuries such as workplace trauma. Of course injuries can be prevented, but doing so takes well-conducted, controlled research by many people over time; the results of such studies can lead to a reduction in injury frequency.