Germany
Nasrin Shahedifar
Nasrin Shahedifar is a researcher in epidemiology and public health with experience in cohort and registry-based dataset. Her work focuses on injury epidemiology, traumatic brain injury, and cognitive and behavioral outcomes. She applies advanced quantitative methods including psychometric evaluation, machine learning, and big data analysis to complex public health challenges. She has contributed to a project on traumatic brain injury survivors’ cognitive functions and driving performance, and involved in all stages including study design, data collection and management, analysis, reporting, and dissemination.
Her work on psychometric evaluation of World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule within the PERSIAN Post-Crash Cohort examined disability, post-traumatic stress disorder, and health outcomes among road traffic injury survivors using cohort and registry data. As a researcher and executive manager of the PERSIAN Post-Crash Traffic Cohort Study, she contributed to study design, implementation, analysis, and dissemination. Her broader research portfolio includes studies on adolescent mental health, suicidal behaviors, internet addiction, interpersonal communication, and domestic violence against women, reflecting a sustained commitment to interdisciplinary and evidence-based public health research.
Every year, more than 60 million people suffer from traumatic brain injury (TBI). Doctor’s visits and physical exams do not always reveal problems with driving, a multitasking skill, when patients ask about getting back behind the wheel. Driving requires ongoing, simultaneous brain abilities such as concentrating, judging, and coordinating eyes and hands. Deficits in any of these task areas are not readily visible. The on-road driving assessment is controversial as it is based on personal observations in a limited environment for a brief time, and it puts drivers and examiners at serious risk. Therefore, I assess TBI survivors and study their driving behaviors in different timespans over a year, using a driving simulator for specific neuropsychological tasks which allow for an immersive experience without real-life road risks. This allows us to measure many concerns such as divided attention, reaction time, and collision-avoidance behaviors. Subjects respond to unexpected events like pedestrians crossing, the sudden exit from a parked car, and sudden braking by a lead car. This project will help physicians accurately assess their patients’ driving skills and identify potential driving problems before they arise. Finally, I will compare survivors’ collision risk and risk behavior to those of drivers without TBI
Epidemiology; Traumatic Brain Injury; External Causes; Psychometric Evaluation; Disability; Mental Health; Big Data