I am a primary care physician, health economist and health policy researcher, and Assistant Professor of General Medicine at the University of Michigan. I’m excited to join the MVC team as a faculty advisor.

My research uses large administrative and financial databases to examine the bidirectional relationship between health and financial outcomes for patients. I obtained my Ph.D. from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in 2015, and my M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 2017. My doctoral dissertation demonstrated that the Affordable Care Act’s mandate for insurance coverage of prescription contraceptives had a dramatic impact on out-of-pocket spending and utilization of birth control among commercially insured women, increasing their use of highly effective methods of contraception like intrauterine devices (IUDs). After completing my M.D./Ph.D. degrees, I went on to complete my clinical training in Internal Medicine/Primary Care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Since beginning my faculty position at U-M in 2020, I have expanded my research agenda by studying the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the utilization of health services and out-of-pocket spending among vulnerable populations, and examining the impact of health shocks and policy changes on patient financial outcomes using consumer credit report data. These novel data overcome a measurement barrier—the lack of detailed health and financial data for large patient populations—that has limited prior work in this area. My ultimate goal is to produce research that will inform the development of health and social policies that improve patient health outcomes and protect them from the financial consequences of illness.

I’m thrilled to join the MVC team as a faculty advisor because I believe strongly that the impacts of research should not stop when the work is published, but need to be translated and communicated to policymakers, providers, and health insurers so that patients can reap the benefits of what we learn from our work. MVC uses large administrative datasets and advanced analytics to help providers improve the quality of care delivered to patients in Michigan; this is exactly the type of research translation to which I’m excited to contribute. I’m particularly excited to help MVC expand their work in the areas of health equity, new data sources, and new patient populations.