I am an assistant professor at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. I am the recipient of a National Institutes of Health 5-year career development K01 award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The project is titled “Not-For-Profit Hospital Community Benefit: Multi-Sectoral Collaboration in Local Health Planning to Improve Population Health, Equity, and Hospital Investment in the Social Determinants of Health”.

I hold an Adjunct Senior Fellow appointment at the University of Pennsylvania Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and Penn Center for Public Health Initiatives. I am a Public Voices Fellow of AcademyHealth in partnership with The OpEd Project and a recipient of an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality T32 Training Award (2020-2022). I am a Board of Directors member for the Louisiana Public Health Institute.

My research seeks to advance population health and the policies and institutions that support it through the use of rigorous research methods to address emerging questions on the role of several public health actors in meeting the social determinants of health. Specifically, my area of research focuses broadly on three anchor institutions that contribute to population health and equity: a) state and local public health departments; b) hospitals; and c) primary care providers. My research has leveraged the implementation of several policy reforms including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and other policies, to understand how these three key actors contribute to advancing population health and health equity, alone and through their intersection.

I have a number of peer-reviewed publications in each of these areas.

Most of my research has used a mixed-methods approach including primary qualitative data collection and secondary data such as administrative claims (e.g., all-payer claims data, Medicaid, and private health insurance), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services hospital financial data, local health department data from the National Association of County and City Health Officials Profile Study, American Community Survey, and other large databases.

Principal investigator: (Academic-Private partnership) Study of alternative payment models for primary care transformation and behavioral health integration. Grant ($10,000): Mack Institute for Innovation Management, Research Fellowship 2021. “Effectiveness of Behavioral Health Integration Into the Primary Care Setting”