Harry Guess Research Community
Welcome to the Harry Guess Research Community, a virtual research community for pharmacoepidemiology, patient-reported outcomes, and pediatric therapeutics. The site is named for the late Harry Guess, MD, PhD, to honor his extraordinary contributions to knowledge about therapeutics. We invite you to learn more about Harry in the biography below. Harry was an indefatigable educator, and a genuine champion of sharing tools and resources to improve science and, thereby, improve what science can do.
It is our hope that this community will be a repository of valid and freely available research tools and resources. We invite you to help us grow by offering contributions of material to be included on the site. To offer tools, resources, or announcements, please send a message to the UNC CERTs.
As so many of us did during Harry’s life, we hope that the website will become so useful that people everywhere will say “You can go to Harry Guess to find that out.”
Scholarship Fund
Dr. Guess’s colleagues have created two scholarship funds in his memory.
An additional scholarship has been presented by Merck Research Laboratories, which will provide matching funds for Merck employees:
To make a secure online contribution, please visit Give UNC. Once on the site click the “Give Now” button and then click “Search”. Type Harry Guess in the search box and you will find both scholarship funds.
- The Harry Guess Scholarship (fund code 444672)
- Merck-Harry Guess Scholarship in Pharmacoepidemiology (fund code 444673)
Methods Appendices
Space constraints in journals mean that extensive methodological discussions can’t often be published along with the articles they support.
We offer this web site as a solution to the challenge of disseminating the methods that support cutting edge new work. With your contributions, this page can become a repository of the material that might otherwise be published along with articles as methodological appendices. We think that making such appendices available here will enhance the value of the published article by starting conversations among interested researchers about how best to improve our ability to answer pressing questions about safer, more effective, and higher quality use of therapeutics.
The links here connect you to various methods documents associated with published research. Click on a link to explore the materials so generously provided by study authors. When we can do so, we will include a link to the published article with the methods appendices.
To access the information and tools provided please expand, read and agree to the EULA below:
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The HMO Research Network Chronic Disease Score (CDS) Utility
Parker Pettus, K. Arnold Chan, Keith Kaye, James Donahue, Richard Platt, Kathy Putnam, Julie Kelleher, and Marsha Raebel.
The first contribution to the Methods Appendices page comes to us from colleagues at the HMO Research Network Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs). Their CDS Utility offers a procedure for calculating the Clark CDS. Clicking on the hyperlink below will take you to a complete set of documents. Please begin by reading “CDS_Intro” and please note that the HMO Research Network CERTs cannot provide any technical support. This is an archival document and any references to external documents may not be available.
SAS Macro for Doubly Robust Estimation
The UNC CERTs has developed a SAS(r) macro for doubly robust estimation of the effect of a dichotomous treatment (or exposure) on a continuous or dichotomous outcome with related standard errors. Base SAS v8 or later is required.
Downloads
SAS macro for doubly robust estimation including documentation
- drmacro.sas (for security reasons this file has a .txt extension)
- drmanual
- End_user_license
- README
Dataset for sample analyses (1.7 MB optional)
- study.sas7bdat (for security reasons this file has a .txt extension)
Presentations
Causal Contrast Spreadsheet
The Causal Contrast Spreadsheet macro is free software. You may use it for any personal or educational purpose, including installing it on as many different computers as you wish.
You may also copy, distribute and/or modify the macro (either version), under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) as published by the Free Software Foundation – either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. In granting you this right, the GPL requires that the source code you distribute is itself available under the GPL. If you distribute or recommend The Center for Pharmacoepidemiology in any way, please cite our trademark by referring to The Center for Pharmacoepidemiology as “The Center for Pharmacoepidemiology®” and reference PDS06 paper for Version 1 and J Intern Med 2014 one for Version 2 of the macro.
Version 2 of the macro: EPID-CausalComp.V2
Please reference Journal of Internal Medicine 2014 when using this macro.
Version 1 of the macro:EPID-CausalComp.V1
Please reference Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety 2006 when using this macro
SAS macro for predicting frailty using claims data
Link to frailtyMacro.zip (for security reasons this file has a .txt extension)
Link to Frailty_Macro_ICD10_Update.zip
Please reference Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety 2015 when using this macro.
Updated supplemental material
Biography
Dr. Harry Guess
Harry Guess MD, PhD, age 65, died at his home in Chapel Hill, NC on January 1, 2006, following a courageous battle against lung cancer.
Dr. Guess was the third UNC CERTs Principal Investigator, guiding CERTs research and education from 2003 until his death. He followed former Dean of Pharmacy William H. Campbell, PhD, and Pediatrics Chair Alan Stiles, MD, in the role.
Dr. Guess ended an illustrious career at Merck as Vice President of Epidemiology at Merck Research Laboratories. During his time at Merck, he was an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology here at UNC, and many students and colleagues were accustomed to beating a path to his office each Monday for invaluable research guidance.
Upon his retirement from Merck in 2003, he joined UNC full time, becoming Professor of Epidemiology and Pediatrics, and Director of the GlaxoSmtihKline Center of Excellence in Pharmacoepidemiology at UNC. Drs. Campbell and Stiles seized the opportunity of having Dr. Guess in Chapel Hill full time to enlist him as the leader of the CERTs.
“No one in the world could have been better equipped to lead the CERTs into its next phase,” said Bill Campbell. “Harry was a pediatrician and a leading figure in pharmacoepidemiology, with zeal to teach the clinical and research communities about better therapeutics use, especially for children. We could not have been luckier to have him take over the CERTs.”
All of us working in the UNC CERTs knew that, in Harry, we had gained the commitment, energy, and phenomenal intelligence of one of the world’s best pharmacoepidemiologists. Harry also brought us the most wonderful capacity to be a completely interested and engaged colleague. For Harry, no problem was too small or seemed too unimportant; he gave every question his fullest attention, and his colleagues never failed to come away from talking to Harry with solutions. Few scholars knew more about methodology or understood the techniques and perspectives of a larger number of academic disciplines and fields of inquiry. Whether a CERTs project involved clinical trials of medical devices or the measurement of children’s health-related quality of life, and everything in between, Harry contributed practical research strategy and intellectual insight.
He was born in New York, to Harry A. Guess and Vista Brabham Guess. Following his mother’s death shortly after his birth, he was adopted by his aunt Dorothy Brabham Guess who had married his father. After his father’s death in 1946, Dr. Guess lived with his adoptive mother in Bamberg, SC.
He attended Georgia Tech on a Navy ROTC scholarship and graduated in 1964 with both a BS and a MS in Applied Mathematics. He served in the United States Navy for five and a half years on Admiral Rickover’s staff at the Atomic Energy Commission, Division of Naval Reactors. After completing his military service, Dr. Guess attended Stanford University where he received a Ph.D. in Mathematics and an MS in Operational Research in 1972.
He earned his medical degree from the University of Miami and completed his residency training in pediatrics at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was board certified in pediatrics and in public health and general preventive medicine.
Dr. Guess co-authored more than 150 publications and served on the editorial consultant boards of Epidemiology and Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. He was recently awarded the Sustained Scientific Excellence Award by the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology.
Harry was known as the consummate teacher, training and advising many graduate students, and fostering the development of both junior and senior scientists at Merck, UNC, and elsewhere. He brought his curiosity and spirit of inquiry to everything. His colleagues enjoyed talking with him about everything from naval history and college basketball to travel and feminist poetry, which he read because one of his two daughters is a poet. He and his wife Gerry were the most hospitable and generous of hosts, welcoming friends and colleagues often to their home for good food and good conversation.
“Harry Guess was a wonderful leader with a balanced vision for establishing safe and effective use of therapeutics in children,” said Alan Stiles, Pediatrics Chair, North Carolina Children’s Hospital Physician in Chief, and CERTs Co-PI. “He was insightful, respected as an international scholar in pharmacoepidemiology, a valued collaborator, and a thoughtful teacher and mentor for his students and young faculty. He will be greatly missed by our UNC CERTs and by me personally.”
Dr. Guess was also the principal investigator of the UNC Primary Research Site in the National Institutes of Health Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) network, part of a large NIH roadmap initiative to study the dynamic assessment of patient-reported chronic disease outcomes.
Dr. Guess is survived by his wife, Geraldine Graflund Guess; two daughters, Carol Guess of Seattle, WA, and Alison Guess Fitton, son-in-law Bruce Howard Fitton, and one grandchild Jacob David Fitton of Burke, VA.
Publications
Dr. Guess co-authored more than 150 publications and served on the editorial consultant boards of Epidemiology and Journal of Clinical Epidemiology.
In 2005, he received the Sustained Scientific Excellence Award by the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology.
To view more of Dr. Guess’s publications, visit PubMed.
Guess HA, Chute CG, Garraway WM, Girman CJ, Panser LA, Lee RJ, Jacobsen SJ, McKelvie GB, Oesterling JE, and Lieber MM: Similar levels of urological symptoms have similar impact on Scottish and American men–although Scots report less symptoms. J Urol. 1993; 150:1701-1705.
Jacobsen SJ, Girman CJ, Guess HA, Panser LA, Chute CG, Oesterling JE, et al. Natural history of prostatism: factors associated with discordance between frequency and bother of urinary symptoms. Urology . 1993; 42:663-671.
Hartmaier SL, Sloane PD, Guess HA, and Koch GG: The MDS Cognition Scale: a valid instrument for identifying and staging nursing home residents with dementia using the minimum data set. J Am Geriatr Soc . 1994; 42:1173-1179.
Girman CJ, Jacobsen SJ, Guess HA, Oesterling JE, Chute CG, Panser LA, et al. Natural history of prostatism: relationship among symptoms, prostate volume and peak urinary flow rate. J Urol . 1995; 153:1510-1515.
Guess HA, Jacobsen SJ, Girman CJ, Oesterling JE, Chute CG, Panser LA, and Lieber MM: The role of community-based longitudinal studies in evaluating treatment effects. Example: benign prostatic hyperplasia. Med Care . 1995; 33:AS26-35.
Hartmaier SL, Sloane PD, Guess HA, Koch GG, Mitchell CM, and Phillips CD: Validation of the Minimum Data Set Cognitive Performance Scale: agreement with the Mini-Mental State Examination. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 1995; 50:M128-33.
Jacobsen SJ, Girman CJ, Guess HA, Panser LA, Chute CG, Oesterling JE, et al. Do prostate size and urinary flow rates predict health care- seeking behavior for urinary symptoms in men? Urology. 1995; 45:64-69.
O’Leary MP, Fowler FJ, Lenderking WR, Barber B, Sagnier PP, Guess HA, and Barry MJ: A brief male sexual function inventory for urology. Urology . 1995; 46:697-706.
Panser LA, Rhodes T, Girman CJ, Guess HA, Chute CG, Oesterling JE, Lieber MM, and Jacobsen SJ: Sexual function of men ages 40 to 79 years: the Olmsted County Study of Urinary Symptoms and Health Status Among Men. J Am Geriatr So c. 1995; 43:1107-1111.
Rhodes T, Girman CJ, Jacobsen SJ, Guess HA, Hanson KA, Oesterling JE, and Lieber MM: Does the mode of questionnaire administration affect the reporting of urinary symptoms? Urology. 1995; 46:341-345.
West SL, Savitz DA, Koch G, Strom BL, Guess HA, and Hartzema A: Recall accuracy for prescription medications: self-report compared with database information. Am J Epidemiol. 1995; 142:1103-1112.
Jacobsen SJ, Girman CJ, Guess HA, Rhodes T, Oesterling JE, and Lieber MM: Natural history of prostatism: longitudinal changes in voiding symptoms in community dwelling men. J Urol. 1996; 155:595-600.
Sagnier PP, Girman CJ, Garraway M, Kumamoto Y, Lieber MM, Richard F, MacFarlane G, Guess HA, Jacobsen SJ, Tsukamoto T, and Boyle P: International comparison of the community prevalence of symptoms of prostatism in four countries. Eur Urol. 1996; 29:15-20.
Barber BL, Strahlman ER, Laibovitz R, Guess HA, and Reines SA: Validation of a questionnaire for comparing the tolerability of ophthalmic medications. Ophthalmology . 1997; 104:334-342.
Roberts RO, Rhodes T, Girman CJ, Guess HA, Oesterling JE, Lieber MM, and Jacobsen SJ: The decision to seek care. Factors associated with the propensity to seek care in a community-based cohort of men. Arch Fam Med . 1997; 6:218-222.
Girman CJ, Jacobsen SJ, Tsukamoto T, Richard F, Garraway WM, Sagnier PP, Guess HA, Rhodes T, Boyle P, and Lieber MM: Health-related quality of life associated with lower urinary tract symptoms in four countries. Urology . 1998; 51:428-436.
Girman CJ, Jacobsen SJ, Rhodes T, Guess HA, Roberts RO, and Lieber MM: Association of health-related quality of life and benign prostatic enlargement. Eur Urol. 1999; 35:277-284.
Coplan.P, Chiacchierini L, Nikas A, Shea J, Baumritter A, Beutner K, Cassidy W, Sawyer M, Watson B, Heyse J, and Guess H: Development and evaluation of a standardized questionnaire for identifying adverse events in vaccine clinical trials. Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety . 2000; 9:457-471.
Ross K, Carter HB, Pearson JD, and Guess HA: Comparative efficacy of prostate specific antigen screening strategies for prostate cancer detection. JAMA . 2000; 284:1399-1405.
Su L, Tucker R, Frey S.E., Gress J.O., Chan I.S.F., Kuter BJ, and Guess HA: Measuring injection-site pain associated with vaccine administration in adults: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Journal of Epidemiology and Biostatistic s. 2000; 5:359-366.
Tollman SM, Bastian H, Doll R, Hirsch LJ, and Guess HA: What are the effects of the fifth revision of the Declaration of Helsinki? British Medical Journal . 2001; 323:1417-1423.
Grabenstein JD, Guess HA, Hartzema AG, Koch GG, and Konrad TR: Attitudinal factors among adult prescription recipients associated with choice of where to be vaccinated. J Clin Epidemiol . 2002; 55:279-284.
Guess HA, Kleinman A, Kusek JW, and Engel LW: The Science of the Placebo . 2002;
Rojas C, Coplan PM, Rhodes T, Robertson MN, DiNubile MJ, and Guess HA: Indinavir did not further increase mean triglyceride levels in HIV-infected patients treated with nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors: an analysis of three randomized clinical trials. Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety . 2003; 12:361-369.
Guess HA. Exposure-time-varying hazard function ratios in case-control studies of drug effects. Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety . 2006; 2:81-92
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