Carolyn Drews-Botsch, PhD, MPH

Dr. Carolyn Drews-Botsch is a Professor of Global and Community Health in the College of Public Health. Her research has focused on the epidemiology of pediatric conditions and the factors, particularly in the perinatal period, that contribute to their etiology. Specifically, her work seeks to understand these conditions, and carefully apply modern epidemiologic methods to studies of these conditions. Her research program has included work in a variety of related fields including congenital cataracts, fetal growth restriction – particularly in relationship to placental development, intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorders. 

Some key findings include: 

• The role of socioeconomic status on developmental outcomes: It has long been recognized that social class is a strong predictor of neurodevelopment. For example, the prevalence of mild intellectual disability is more than twice as high in children from poorer households as among children whose families are more affluent. What has been less clear, however, is how this relationship impacts the effects of other, physiologic, risk factors for adverse development. I have been involved in a variety of studies which have sought to address this question by examining risk factors for intellectual disability and other developmental disabilities in more homogeneous phenotypic categories and within social strata. This work led to a paradigm shift in understanding that socioeconomic status contributes to severe intellectual disability when there are no other underlying biological factors that impact cognitive development, as well as an understanding that biological insults may impact the risk of intellectual disability differently depending on the child’s social class.
• The impact of vision impairment on children’s quality of life: Spectacles and/or contact lenses, and occlusion therapy are commonly used to treat in children with vision disorders. Further, even given early and aggressive treatment, a significant proportion of children with unilateral cataracts are left with poor vision in the treated eye and little stereopsis. However, relatively little is known about the impact of these treatments or these conditions on the lives of children and their families. Her work has focused on assessing the amount of occlusion therapy that these children receive during early childhood, as well as the impact of these treatments on quality of life and motor development.
• Understanding and minimizing bias in epidemiologic studies of perinatal outcomes:  It has become increasingly recognized that pregnancy, and in utero development, set the stage for later health outcomes and risk of disease.  However, high rates of loss to pregnancy losses – even before pregnancy recognition, the importance of stages of vulnerability, the difficulty of assessing exposure to the fetus as compared to maternal exposure, the often long lag between development and identification of conditions, and the reliance on maternal recall of events and exposures complicate epidemiologic studies of conditions.  Her methodologic work has sought to empirically investigate the impact of bias, particularly information bias, on the results of epidemiologic studies. Specifically, my dissertation investigated the extent to which mothers of infants who had died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome reported events with differential accuracy as compared to mothers of control infants.  This work led to work to investigate the impact of how choosing different control groups might rectify this situation as well as work on analytic methods to control for differential recall.  

Prior to coming to Mason, Dr. Drews-Botsch was a tenured professor at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.  Her administrative responsibilities included terms as Vice Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Associate Dean in the Laney School of Graduate Studies.  

Research

Select Publications

1. Orji AF, Drews-Botsch CD, Turpin R, Gimm G, Parekh T. Examining Disparities in Cervical Cancer Diagnosis at the Intersection of Disability and Sexual Orientation. In press, Disability and Health Journal.
2. Yeh S, Shantha JG, Fashina T, Stittleburge V, Randleman C, Ward L, Regueiro M, Krako D, Linderman SL, Drews-Botsch C, Ahmed R, Waggoner J. COVID-19 and the Eye: Systemic and Laboratory Risk Factors for Retinopathy and Detection of Tear Film SARS-CoV2 RNA with a Triplex RT-PCR Assay. In Press, PLOS-One.
3. Wong C, Das U, Forbes H, Kolosky T, Cho E, Mansoor S, Chase S, Kore M, Levin MR, Magder L, Drews-Botsch C, Lambert SR, Alexander JL. Association of Age with Glaucoma and Visual Acuity Outcomes 10.5 Years After Unilateral Congenital Cataract Surgery. Am J Ophthalmol. 2025 Mar 26;276:22-29. doi: 10.1016/j.ajo.2025.03.035. Online ahead of print.PMID: 40154907.
4. Wong CK, Forbes H, Kolosky T, Das U, Cho E, Mansoor S, Chase S, Kore M, Levin MR, Magder L, Drews-Botsch C. Association of Age With Glaucoma and Visual Acuity Outcomes 10.5 Years After Unilateral Congenital Cataract Surgery. American Journal of Ophthalmology. 2025 Mar 26.
5. Hartmann EE, Drews-Botsch C, DuBois L, Lambert SR, Infant Aphakia Treatment Study Group. Stereopsis in the Infant Aphakia Treatment Study: outcome at 10½ years. Eye. 2025 Mar 8:1-2. doi: 10.1038/s41433-025-03731-3. Online ahead of print.PMID: 40057655
6. Drews-Botsch CD, Hartman EE, Celano M, Zaidi J, Lambert SR. Early Patching Behaviors that Improve the Chances of Good Visual Acuity in Children Treated for Unilateral Congenital Cataract. Ophthalmology. 2024 Dec 28.
7. Drews-Botsch CD, Cotsonis G, Celano M, Zaidi J, Hartmann EE, Lambert SR. Is Patching After Age 4 Beneficial for Children Born with a Unilateral Congenital Cataract? Ophthalmology. 2025 Apr;132(4):389-396. doi: 10.1016/j.ophtha.2024.11.005. Epub 2024 Nov 9.PMID: 39522734
8. Machicado K, Weinstein AA, Zaidi J, Lambert SR, Drews-Botsch C. The Prevalence of Obesity is Increased in Adolescents with Amblyopia: An Analysis of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Data. Childhood Obesity. 2024 Dec 10.
9. Drews-Botsch C, Cotsonis G, Celano M, Hartmann EE, Zaidi J, Lambert SR. Patching in children with unilateral congenital cataract and child functioning and parenting stress. JAMA Ophthalmology, On line 2024 April 18.

• High attention score (94^th percentile and top 25% of all research outputs by Altmetric – July 2024)
• Selected for author interview pod cast for JAMA Network Patching in Children With Unilateral Congenital Cataract and Child Functioning and Parenting Stress Podcast was originally published on June 27, 2024.
• Selected for Editorial Liu Y, Liu Z. Psychosocial Impact of Patching in Unilateral Congenital Cataract. JAMA ophthalmology. 2024 Apr 18.

10. Harris S, Schieve L, Drews-Botsch C, DiGuiseppi C, Tian LH, Soke GN, Bradley CB, Windham GC. Pregnancy Planning and its Association with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Findings from the Study to Explore Early Development. Maternal and Child Health Journal (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-023-03877-0.
11. Labgold K, Howards PP, Drews-Botsch C, Dunlop AL, Bryan JM, Ruddock T, Johnston S, Kramer MR. Decomposing the black–white racial disparity in severe maternal morbidity risk: the role of Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. Epidemiology. 2024 Jan 1;35(1):94-102.
12. Choo CH, Ward L, Crozier I, Fashina T, Yan D, Hayek BR, Hartley C, Vandy M, Mattia JG, Harrison-Williams L, Mustapha J, Drews-Botsch C, Yeh S, Shantha S. Ophthalmic Sequelae of Ebola Virus Disease in Survivors, Sierra Leone. Emerging Infectious Diseases. 2024 Dec;30(12):2502.
13. Antonio-Aguirre B, Block SS, Asare AO, Baldanado K, Ciner EB, Coulter RA, DeCarlo DK, Drews-Botsch C, Fishman D, Hartmann EE, Killeen OJ. Association of Sociodemographic Characteristics with Pediatric Vision Screening and Eye Care: An Analysis of the 2021 National Survey of Children's Health. Ophthalmology. 2024 May 1;131(5):611-21. doi: 10.1016/j.ophtha.2023.12.005. Epub 2023 Dec 10.
14. Shantha JG, Fashina T, Stittleburg V, Randleman C, Ward L, Regueiro M, Krakow D, Linderman SL, Drews-Botsch C, Ahmed R, Waggoner J. COVID-19 and the eye: Systemic and laboratory risk factors for retinopathy and detection of tear film SARS-CoV-2 RNA with a triplex RT-PCR assay. PLoS One. 2022 Nov 9;17(11):e0277301.

Honors and Awards

• Mentor Award, Society of Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research
• Ken Rothman Career Accomplishment Award, Society for Epidemiologic Research
• Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award in Medical Sciences, 2024-25
• Selected by President Wagner and the President’s Commission on the Status of Women to attend HERS, 2006
• Elected, Upsilon Chapter, Delta Omega
• Outstanding Graduate Student, UCLA Public Health Alumni Association
• Participant, Society for Epidemiologic Research Student Workshop
• Auxiliary Scholarship, UCLA Medical Center
• University Grant, School of Public Health, UCLA
• National Research Service Award in Cancer Epidemiology, National Institutes of Health
• Predoctoral Fellowship, Bush Foundation
• Elected, Phi Beta Kappa
• Provost's Honor Roll, University of California, San Diego

Degrees

• Doctor of Philosophy, Epidemiology, University of California, Los Angeles
• Master of Public Health, Population and Faculty Health, University of California, Los Angeles
• Bachelor of Arts , Biology, University of California, San Diego