Prof. Christophi is a Biostatistician. His research group has worked on obesity and diabetes; smoking and health; and several other important topics in Public Health. He is an Assistant Professor at CUT and holds an appointment as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Environmental Health at Harvard.

Working with collaborators from Harvard (including Professors David Christiani, Stefanos Kales and Christos Mantzoros) and from the Cyprus Ministry of Defense, his group initiated an epidemiological investigation of the health of young Cypriot males who were serving in the Cypriot armed forces. Their intent was to study the relationships between genetics, environment, metabolism and obesity in these young recruits. The team found that, when they joined the army, almost one third of these young men were either overweight or obese. Two years later when they left the army, their obesity had increased and their cardiovascular health had deteriorated.

In a series of manuscripts, again working with Prof. Kales at Harvard, the team explored the roles of obesity, physical activity and measures of cardiorespiratory fitness as predictors of metabolic syndrome (i.e., diabetes) and cardiovascular disease risk among firefighters and other emergency workers.

Professor Christophi’s research group has also been involved in several studies of tobacco smoking habits and determinants in Cyprus. In this research, through our association with Harvard, they have benefitted from the guidance and direct involvement of Professor Greg Connolly, a world-recognized authority on smoking and health. One study, conducted in close collaboration with Cyprus’ Ministries of Health and Education, collected data on smoking behavior, knowledge and attitudes of Cypriot youth. This investigation found that almost 40% of high school boys and about 25% of girls smoke. The levels of smoking among girls are quite high and suggest that levels of smoking among women in Cyprus are rising dramatically. Also troubling was the finding that almost one quarter of students who did not smoke indicated that they were likely to start smoking within the next year.

To mitigate this problem it is important to understand the determinants of the individual choice to smoke – especially among adolescents. Prof. Christophi’s team studied this and found that whether parents or grandparents smoked, whether friends smoked, the ease of buying cigarettes, and the belief that smoking helps control weight were all important factors in determining whether a child will choose to smoke.

Most recently, in a collaboration involving CII, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Dasman Diabetes Institute in Kuwait, Prof. Christophi’s group is contributing to the development and analysis of data from a large pregnancy-birth cohort study intended to examine the effect of in utero and early life environmental exposures to the subsequent development of chronic diseases such as diabetes.

His group’s publication record is impressive, with articles in journals as prestigious as the New England Journal of Medicine (impact factor = 55).