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Faculty

Joseph J. Gallo, MD, MPH

Joseph Gallo

Professor, Bloomberg School of Public Health
Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Joseph J. Gallo MD MPH is a Professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.  His research concerns the form and presentation of depression in late life in community settings, particularly primary health care in the context of medical comorbidity.

A major focus of research concerns the form and course of depression among older adults. Based on clinical experience, he noted that depressed older persons in primary care settings often did not assent to sadness. Using the data from the NIMH Epidemiologic Catchment Area surveys he carried out a series of studies using novel statistical modeling (the MIMIC model) to explore how depression presents differently among older adults than younger persons. The spectrum studies, a series of proposals using mixed methods, built on these findings to carry out a mixed methods study of how older adults experience depression.

A second major area has involved mental health treatment in primary care settings including medical comorbidity. He is the PI for a long-term follow-up of PROSPECT (Prevention of Suicide in Primary Care Elderly – Collaborative Trial), a randomized trial of depression management in primary care practices. The follow-up studies have examined mortality as an outcome in the context of medical comorbidity.  He teaches a course in the School of Public Health called “The Intersection of Physical and Mental Health.”

A third major area involves the use of mixed methods in health services research. Mixed methods can bridge the gap between evidence generated from interventions under “ideal” conditions and the application of evidence-based practices for diverse populations in various contexts.  He is the Principal Investigator for a new Mixed Methods Research Training Program for the Health Sciences, bringing Scholars and mentors in mixed methods together to advance the research employing mixed methods in the health sciences. He was a member of the 2011 working group to provide guidelines for best practices for mixed methods proposals for NIH and convened by the Office for Behavioral and Social Science Research, which used our project on depression as an exemplar.  He co-wrote a chapter on funding and publishing mixed methods studies for the Second Edition of the Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social & Behavioral Research (Sage, 2010).