Eric A. Rodgman
Senior Database Analyst
Eric A. Rodgman has been employed at the UNC Highway Safety Research Center for twenty-nine years. Mr. Rodgman has a Baccalaureate degree in mathematics (from UNC-CH, August 1974) and a Masters in Public Health degree from the biostatistics department in research data management (from UNC-CH SPH, May 1986). During his tenure at HSRC, Mr. Rodgman worked on numerous projects using hospital and emergency room medical data, trauma registry data, special population survey data, driver license data, vehicle registration data, roadway segment and location data, and traffic crash data from numerous states across the country. Mr. Rodgman collaborated with different medical doctors/researchers in the traffic safety field. Specific examples include a collaboration with the UNC Hospital Emergency Department (Dr. Fred Hansen) on several alcohol and motor vehicle injury research projects, with a medical doctor and UNC clinical research scholar (Dr. Laura Hanson) on a study concerning the use of medical services at the end of life by individuals having living wills, and with medical researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in Philadelphia (Dr. Allan Pack, et al) doing a study of sleepiness as a contributing factor in NC motor vehicle crashes.
Mr. Rodgman has many years experience linking and merging various databases both with and without common keys. During his twenty-nine years at the UNC Highway Safety Research Center he designed, wrote, tested, and executed numerous 360/370 IBM Assembler Language, COBOL, PL1 and SAS computer programs which created project study data files, performed data quality control checks, and developed various complex analysis tasks as needed and required by the project research protocols. In addition, Mr. Rodgman designed and created traffic crash report forms along with the complete computerized traffic crash report record systems for the governments of Kuwait (1980) and Surinam (1985) as a private consultant. As a data specialist, computer analyst, and co-researcher on many HSRC research projects, Mr. Rodgman has been recognized as a co-author or a lead author on more than forty-five research papers and project reports.
Mr. Rodgman has been recognized for some of these many efforts over the years having been awarded the Best Scientific Paper as last co-author on two different AAAM papers in 1985 and 1989, respectively. More recently, a paper titled "The Risk of Dying in Alcohol-Related Automobile Crashes among Habitual Drunk Drivers" won the 1995 Charles C. Shepard Award for its authors where the study data file used for analysis was created by Mr. Rodgman. The study consisted of examining fatally injured drivers taken from the NC Medical Examiner data for 1980-1989; these were linked to the appropriate motor vehicle crash reports and further linked to the NC driver history record data for each individual’s past driving record. In 1992 in Cologne Germany, HSRC was recognized for its long term research commitment to alcohol and traffic safety research by winning the International Committee on Alcohol, Drugs, and Traffic Safety Award for its continued research service in this field. Mr. Rodgman has been involved with and responsible for many of the alcohol and traffic safety studies completed during the period for which this award was given.
More recently, Mr. Rodgman was been pleased to be involved in the safety efforts sponsored by the North Carolina Governor’s Highway Safety Program projects which largely focus on partnering with local traffic safety advocates and law enforcement agencies. This project has been supported by NC GHSP for a number of years. Its’ strength is in the way helps local communities and counties to understand their local traffic problems based on actual data from their community. This, in turn, allows the local community to address problems using local services and resources. Programs like Safe Communities, Click It or Ticket, Booze It and Lose It, Child Safety Seat use, and adult seat belt use are more effective when the local community is personally involved.
Mr. Rodgman has served as the secretary of the UNC SPH Alumni Association, as an at-large member of the UNC SPHAA, as President of the UNC SPH Biostatistics Department Alumni Association, and as an at-large member of the Alumni Association Board in Biostatistics. He is an active runner, basketball and tennis player, a soccer and basketball coach, a Deacon at the Triangle Presbyterian Church in Durham, a former Sunday School teacher at TPC having taught fourth, fifth and sixth grade Sunday School classes for many years, a former Red Cross pheresis blood donor (having donated 39+ gallons), father of three active children, a voting citizen of the City of Durham, and happily married husband to Ms. Melody Rodgman for the past 21 years.
