I am an assistant professor at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. I have a senior adjunct faculty appointment at the Colorado School of Public Health, and 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 core member of the COVID-19 Modeling Group in CO and lead the development of the CO Population Data Dashboard. 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).
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, and many working papers that will be submitted to high-impact peer-reviewed journals in the near future
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”
Principal investigator: Study of nonprofit hospital and local health department collaboration in local health planning to address the drug epidemic and other population health priorities.
COVID-19 Related Work
ColoradoSPH COVID-19 Modeling Group. Core member overseeing data collection, analysis, and reporting on hospital capacity and local health department contact tracing workforce and technical capacity. The group is directly advising the CO Department of Public Health and Environment and Governor Jared Polis.
Project Director: ColoradoSPH Population Data Dashboard (Website) development: Reaching to Communities to Inform About the COVID-19 Epidemic. Lead the development of a website and spin-off tools that will reach key decision-makers in CO at state and local levels, and Coloradans generally. The website will feature county-level dashboards with information on community demographics, socio-economic and health indicators, economic activity, COVID-19 surveillance indicators, human mobility, and regional epidemic models.
Co-Investigator: COVID-19 Working Group for Public Health and Social Sciences Research. Supported by the National Science Foundation-funded Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) network and the CONVERGE facility at the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. Develop and administer survey to understand local health department workforce and technical capacity for contract tracing in CO. Survey was collaboratively developed with the CO Association of Local Public Health Officials, state health department and other key local stakeholders. Report will inform state and local contact tracing efforts in coordination with Governor Jared Polis’ appointed Innovation Response Team.
