Doug Wiebe, PhD is the 2017 winner of the Rothman Epidemiology Prize. Selected by the Editors and Editorial Board of Epidemiology, Wiebe received an award of $5000 which is funded from a private endowment and given annually for the best paper published in the journal in the preceding year. The selection criteria are importance, originality, clarity of thought, and excellence in writing. Dr. Wiebe’s winning paper, titled “Mapping Activity Patterns to Quantify Risk of Violent Assault in Urban Environments,” appeared in the journal’s January 2016 issue. The paper used a temporal and spatial scale relevant to the dynamics of violent assault, and showed that gunshot assault risks included being alone, acquiring a gun, and entering areas with more vacancy, violence, and vandalism.

Dr. Wiebe is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Injury Research and Prevention.