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 nonparametric estimation in causal inference and machine learning for prediction. Within health policy, she works on risk adjustment, health care program impact evaluation, and comparative effectiveness research. 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
Augustine (Austin) Denteh, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow in Econometrics, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Denteh's research focuses on health economics and applied econometrics, and he will be working on techniques for generalizability during his 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
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
Savannah Bergquist, Health Policy PhD Candidate, Harvard University
Savannah is currently working on assessing risk adjustment methods applied in the ACA Marketplaces and Medicare Advantage. She is interested in how sample selection affects prediction, particularly for subgroups such as users of mental health services. She is also interested in reproducible research. Savannah 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. Web Email Twitter
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
Anas El Turabi, Health Policy PhD Candidate, Harvard University
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, having received his BA and MD from Oxford University and completed his masters degree and residency at Cambridge University. Web Email Twitter
Rebecca Gourevitch, Health Policy PhD Student, Harvard University
Rebecca is a PhD student 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 Student, Harvard University
Alex is a PhD student 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-Mitchell, 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
Anna Zink, Health Policy PhD Student, Harvard University
Anna is working on projects in algorithmic fairness and health plan payment risk adjustment. She is a second year PhD student 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
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
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
A.J. Rosellini, PhD, Research Assistant Professor, Boston University
Dr. Rosellini's research focuses on psychological and environmental factors that predict development and persistence of anxiety and mood disorders and methods to improve assessment and classificaition of anxiety and mood disorders. Dr. Rosellini did psyciatric epidemiology research as a postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. He received his BA in psychology and PhD in clinical psychology from Boston 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 done research in hospital profiling, regularization, and Bayesian methods and will be pursing a PhD in statistics at the University of California, Berkeley in Fall 2018. 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