Faculty Directors

Laura Hatfield, PhD, Associate Professor of Health Care Policy (Biostatistics), Harvard Medical School

Dr. Hatfield's research focuses on trade-offs and relationships among health outcomes. In particular, she develops and applies statistical methods that incorporate multiple sources of information and relationships among outcomes. She has particular expertise in Bayesian hierarchical modeling. Dr. Hatfield received her BS in genetics from Iowa State University and her PhD in biostatistics from the University of Minnesota. Web Email Twitter

Sherri Rose, PhD, Associate Professor of Health Care Policy (Biostatistics), Harvard Medical School

Broadly, Dr. Rose’s methodological research focuses on statistical machine learning.  Within health policy, she currently works on fairness for plan payment risk adjustment formulas and the generalizability of computational health economics algorithms. Dr. Rose received her BS in statistics from The George Washington University and her PhD in biostatistics from the University of California, Berkeley. Web Email Twitter

Fellows

Christine Baugh, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow in Mental Health Policy, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Baugh's research focuses on the individual, institutional, and ethical considerations of risk and sport. She has an AB in history and science from Harvard College; an MPH in health law, bioethics, and human rights from Boston University; and a PhD in health policy from Harvard University. Web Email Twitter

Maimuna (Maia) Majumder, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Majumder’s current research interests involve probabilistic modeling, data mining, and systems epidemiology in the context of public health. Her fellowship projects will combine novel data sources and generalizability. She has a BS in engineering science and MPH from Tufts University and an SM and PhD in engineering systems from MIT. Web Email Twitter

Bret Zeldow, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow in Statistics, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Zeldow's research focuses on causal inference and Bayesian nonparametric models, including extensions to Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART), with applications to large health care databases. He received his BA in math from University of California, Berkeley; MS in applied statistics from California State University, Long Beach; and PhD in biostatistics from University of Pennsylvania.

Students

Alyssa Bilinski, Health Policy PhD Candidate, Harvard University

Alyssa's research focuses on methods for cost-effectiveness and for difference-in-differences analysis. She has also previously worked on impact and economic evaluations of health programs in low- and middle-income countries. She received a BA in Political Science from Yale College and an MS in Medical Statistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Email

Irina Degtiar, Biostatistics PhD Candidate, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Irina is working on statistical methods for the generalizability of randomized and observational studies. She will use these new tools to evaluate the impact of health plans on mortality in Medicaid. Irina received her BA/BS in molecular and cellular biology/business administration from the University of California, Berkeley and a master's degree in biostatistics from the University of Michigan. Web Email

Rebecca Gourevitch, Health Policy PhD Candidate, Harvard University

Rebecca is a PhD candidate in the evaluative science & statistics track of the health policy program at Harvard. Her primary research interests are in health care consumerism, including the impacts of health care quality and price information on patient choice. Rebecca received her BA from Carleton College and a master of science in health policy & management from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Web Email Twitter

Christoph Kurz, Doctoral Researcher, Helmholtz Zentrum München & LMU Munich

Christoph's research focuses on using claims data for economic evaluation and causal inference. He is also interested in machine learning methods for personalized medicine and Bayesian statistics. Christoph holds a BSc in Mathematics, an MSc in Stochastic Engineering, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Munich. Web Twitter

Kate Lofgren, Health Policy PhD Candidate, Harvard University

Kate’s research focuses on quantifying the trade-offs in complex health system decisions with long expected time horizons. She is also interested in the development and improvement of decision science research methods. Kate received her BA from Smith College and MPH from the University of Washington while a Post-Bachelor Fellow at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Web Email Twitter

Alex McDowell, Health Policy PhD Candidate, Harvard University

Alex is a health policy PhD candidate with prior research experience on quality measurement in accountable care organizations and transgender health curriculum integration. Her current work focuses on assessing health outcomes for gender minority patients. She graduated with a BA in women's and gender studies from Georgetown University and then received her BS in nursing, MS in community public health nursing, and MPH, all from Johns Hopkins University. Web Email

Toyya Pujol, Industrial Engineering/Statistics PhD Candidate, Georgia Institute of Technology

Toyya is a visiting graduate researcher at Harvard working on double robust machine learning for difference-in-differences designs and a PhD candidate in industrial engineering/statistics at Georgia Institute of Technology. She has extensive experience with electronic health data and applications in maternal and infant health. Toyya completed her BS in management science at MIT, MS in operations research at Northeastern University, and MS in statistics at Georgia Institute of Technology. Web Email

Noémie Sportiche, Health Policy PhD Candidate, Harvard University

Noémie’s research focuses on the relationship between urban planning and health. Her current work focuses on housing cost, opportunity, and health disparities. Noémie graduated with a BS in cognitive science from UCLA and an MS in social and behavioral sciences from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Prior to joining the health policy PhD program, Noémie also spent four years as a public health planner at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Boston. Web Email

Anna Zink, Health Policy PhD Candidate, Harvard University

Anna is working on projects in algorithmic fairness and health plan payment risk adjustment supported by her NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She is a third year PhD candidate in the evaluative science & statistics track of the health policy PhD program with previous experience as a data analyst at Acumen, LLC and athenahealth. Anna received her BA in mathematics from Carleton College. Web Email

Alumni

Sam Adhikari, PhD, Assistant Professor, New York University

Dr. Adhikari's research explores Bayesian methods for comparative effectiveness research, statistical learning techniques for prediction, and temporal network analysis. Dr. Adhikari received her BA in mathematics and economics from Mount Holyoke College and PhD in statistics from Carnegie Mellon University. She was previously a postdoctoral fellow in statistics at the Department of Health Care Policy working with Sharon-Lise Normand and Sherri Rose.  Web Email Twitter

Savannah Bergquist, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business

Dr. Bergquist’s current research focuses on developing methods to produce evidence for policymaking in settings where data are systematically missing. She graduated from Georgetown University with an AB in Political Economy and then pursued an MSc in Health, Population, and Society from the London School of Economics before earning her PhD in health policy from Harvard University. Web Email Twitter

Jamie Daw, PhD, Assistant Professor, Columbia University

Dr. Daw's research explores control group selection for policy evaluations and the effects of emerging health insurance designs on health care access and health outcomes. She received her BHSc from McMaster University, MSc in population and public health with a specialty in health services and systems from the University of British Columbia, and PhD in health policy from Harvard University.  Web Email Twitter

Augustine (Austin) Denteh, PhD, Assistant Professor, Tulane University

Dr. Denteh's research focuses on health economics and applied econometrics, and he worked on techniques for generalizability during his econometrics postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard. He has a BA in economics and statistics from the University of Ghana, an MA in economics from the University of Akron, and a PhD in economics from Georgia State University. Web Email

Anas El Turabi, PhD, Expert, Medical Director, McKinsey & Company

Anas's work looks at continuity of care and the effect of financial incentives in primary care. He also maintains an interest in global health, particularly the economics of infectious disease crises and global responses to pandemic risk reduction. He is a primary care physician, and received his BA and MD from Oxford University, completed his masters degree and residency at Cambridge University, and his PhD in health policy from Harvard University. Web Email Twitter

Jeannie Fuglesten Biniek, PhD, Senior Researcher, Health Care Cost Institute

Dr. Fuglesten Biniek's research focuses on issues affecting access to and choice of health insurance coverage, the cost of health care services, and the growth in health care spending. She received her BA in economics from UCLA, MA in applied economics from Johns Hopkins University, and PhD in health policy from Harvard University. Web

Nina Joyce, PhD, K12 Fellow, Brown Univeristy

Dr. Joyce's work focuses on pediatric pharmacoepidemiology, with a special interest in pharmacotherapy for mental health conditions. She received her BA in Biology and Community Health, MPH from Tufts University, and PhD in Epidemiology from Brown University. Web Email

Megan Schuler, PhD, Associate Policy Researcher, RAND Corporation

Dr. Schuler conducts health policy research in mental health and substance use. Previous studies include heterogeneity in mental health symptoms and treatment, causal inference in observational data, and time-varying effect modeling for substance use risk factors. She received her BS in mathematics from Tulane University, MS in biostatistics from the Medical University of South Carolina, and PhD in mental health from the Johns Hopkins University. Previously, she was a Marshall J. Seidman Fellow in Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. Web Email

Akritee Shrestha, Data Scientist, Wayfair

Akritee has interests in data science and wrote her thesis on mental health risk adjustment with clinical confounders and machine learning, where she applied ensembling techniques for prediction in electronic health record data. Akritee graduated from Hamilton College with a BA in chemistry/mathematics and has a master's degree in biostatistics from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Web

Jake Spertus, Statistics PhD Student, University of California, Berkeley

Jake has completed research in hospital profiling, regularization, and Bayesian methods. He is currently pursing a PhD in statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a research assistant in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School and received his BS in mathematics from Bowdoin College. Web Twitter