You and your family may have personal experience with some of the phenomena we study—from chicken pox to childhood diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. Our focus is on studying risk factors—be they events, characteristics, or other definable factors—for various conditions and then finding ways to prevent those conditions among those at risk.
As an example, we might measure how many in a group of people whose parents had asthma also develop the condition compared to those whose parents did not. Then we might study—in a clinical trial such as our current Sleep Apnea trial—how various preventive programs work among those who were born prematurely and who develop sleep apnea.