Jason L. Salemi, PhD, MPH, FACE

Professor, Department of Epidemiology

Chair, Department of Epidemiology

Concentration Lead, PhD Program, Epidemiology

Contact Info

• Office: CPH 2108
• Academic Email: jsalemi@usf.edu
• Academic Phone: (813) 974-9449
• View My C.V. | View My Website | View My Lab Site

Education

Discipline

Epidemiology

Specialization

• Maternal and Child Health
• Birth Defects
• Public Health Surveillance and Data Systems
• Health Data Linkages
• Data Visualization

Biography

Dr. Jason L. Salemi is Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of South Florida College of Public Health. A Tampa native and proud three-time USF alumnus, he earned his BS in Biology, MPH and PhD in Epidemiology, and graduate certificates in Biostatistics and Applied Biostatistics at USF. His career has been shaped by a love of data, an interest in solving difficult problems, and a desire to do work that matters. Before returning to USF in 2020, he spent six years on the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine, where he held leadership roles in research analytics, clinical research training, and a federally funded postdoctoral research fellowship. He was named the inaugural Interim Chair of Epidemiology in 2025 and appointed Chair in 2026. Teaching and mentoring remain among his favorite parts of academic life, particularly helping students move from being intimidated by quantitative methods and programming to confidently using those tools to answer important questions. A husband and father and lifelong Tampa Bay sports fan, he feels fortunate to have built a career that allows him to teach, ask interesting questions, work with people he respects, and contribute to the health of the community he has always called home.

Research Interests

• BIRTH DEFECTS SURVEILLANCE, RESEARCH, AND SYSTEMS OF CARE: Dr. Salemi serves as Principal Investigator of USF's Birth Defects Surveillance Program, a longstanding collaboration with the Florida Department of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supported by approximately $1 million annually. The program integrates statewide birth defects surveillance with epidemiologic research, data modernization, and evaluation of systems of care for children and families affected by birth defects and neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome. This work provides a platform for translating surveillance data into research, prevention, program evaluation, and improvements in public health practice.
• MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH AND EMERGING THREATS: Maternal and child health is Dr. Salemi's primary substantive research home, with particular interests in birth defects, pregnancy outcomes, maternal morbidity, infant health and mortality, neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome, and the health of women of reproductive age. He is especially interested in emerging and re-emerging threats to mothers and babies, where rapidly changing conditions require timely detection, adaptable surveillance, rigorous epidemiologic investigation, and translation of population-level data into actionable public health information.
• PUBLIC HEALTH SURVEILLANCE AND DATA MODERNIZATION: A longstanding focus of Dr. Salemi's work is strengthening and modernizing public health surveillance systems. His interests include electronic data exchange, integration of emerging data sources, automation of surveillance processes, development and validation of case-finding approaches, data quality, and the tradeoffs among timeliness, completeness, and accuracy. He is particularly interested in building surveillance infrastructure that can adapt as technologies, data sources, and public health threats evolve.
• RECORD LINKAGE AND INTEGRATED POPULATION HEALTH DATA SYSTEMS: Much of Dr. Salemi's research involves connecting information across otherwise disconnected systems to create richer longitudinal and population-based data resources. His work includes deterministic and probabilistic record linkage, evaluation of linkage quality, and integration of vital records with administrative, clinical, surveillance, and other health data. He develops linked maternal-infant and other longitudinal data systems to answer questions that no individual data source can adequately address and to create reusable infrastructure for research and public health practice.
• EPIDEMIOLOGIC METHODS AND CAUSAL INFERENCE: Dr. Salemi is drawn to difficult methodological problems involving complex, imperfect, real-world data. His interests include epidemiologic study design, causal inference, longitudinal and multilevel methods, quasi-experimental designs, interrupted time-series analysis, measurement and misclassification, missing data, selection bias, and methods for strengthening causal interpretation of observational evidence. Across this work, he emphasizes aligning the scientific question with the study design, assumptions, analytic methods, and interpretation, and being explicit about what available data can and cannot tell us.
• DATA SCIENCE, PROGRAMMING, AND REPRODUCIBLE RESEARCH: Dr. Salemi works at the intersection of epidemiology, data science, and modern computing, developing reproducible approaches for managing, linking, analyzing, and visualizing large and complex health datasets. His interests include R, Python, automation, predictive modeling, reproducible analytic workflows, and emerging computational tools that can make epidemiologic research and public health surveillance more efficient, transparent, scalable, and reproducible without sacrificing methodological rigor.
• TEACHING, DOCTORAL EDUCATION, AND MENTORSHIP: Dr. Salemi serves as Concentration Lead for USF's PhD Program in Epidemiology and teaches across the epidemiologic methods and data-science curriculum, including Epidemiology Methods, Advanced Research Methods in Epidemiology, Data Management in R for Public Health Researchers, and Multilevel Data Analysis. His teaching spans epidemiologic methods, causal inference, data management, statistical programming, and quantitative methods, with an emphasis on understanding why methods work rather than memorizing procedures. He is equally committed to mentorship and to helping students and early-career scientists develop confidence, independence, and scientific identities of their own. His contributions to mentorship were recognized with the American College of Epidemiology's 2025 Outstanding Mentorship Award.
• NATIONAL LEADERSHIP, SERVICE, AND RECOGNITION: Dr. Salemi is a Fellow and member of the Board of Directors of the American College of Epidemiology and a current Board member and Past President of the National Birth Defects Prevention Network. His national service has included leadership in surveillance guidelines and standards, scientific review, editorial service, and development of national approaches to birth defects surveillance and data quality. With more than 225 peer-reviewed publications, his contributions to research, teaching, mentorship, and service have been recognized with USF's Outstanding Research Achievement Award and Excellence in Teaching Award, the American College of Epidemiology's Outstanding Mentorship Award, and the National Birth Defects Prevention Network's President's Award.
• PHILOSOPHY: Dr. Salemi believes epidemiology is at its best when strong methods are paired with important questions. Whether conducting research, teaching, mentoring, or building surveillance systems, his guiding principles are straightforward: understand the problem, respect the data and their limitations, communicate evidence clearly, do work that matters, treat people well, and help the people around you succeed.
• PUBLICATIONS: To explore Dr. Salemi's publications, visit his public "My Bibliography" page on PubMed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/jason.salemi.1/bibliography/public/