Research Interests

I came to Geisinger in 2007 after spending over 7 years at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in the Department of Pediatrics. At CWRU, I collaborated with research groups studying sleep apnea in adolescents and adults, and behavior and cognitive outcomes from infancy to adolescence in children exposed in-utero to illicit drugs. Since joining Geisinger, I have served as the senior biostatistician in the Medicine Institute, chaired the IRB (2011-2022), and sit on several committees including our Faculty Affairs Committee. In January 2020, I was appointed as the chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences, a multidisciplinary department of epidemiologists, biostatisticians, and health service researchers with a mission to make research matter to our community.

My formal training is in biostatistics with experience analyzing data from electronic health records (EHR), longitudinal studies, observational data for making casual inferences, and designing pragmatic clustered randomized trials. Currently, I am the site PI for the PaTH Clinical Data Research Network, a PCORnet site. The PaTH network has harmonized EHR and claims data across 7 institutions allowing for access to a diverse patient population for large-scale observational and pragmatic studies. In addition, I am site PI and Co-I on an NIDDK funded grant with a goal to develop of a predictive model to identify high risk patients for readmission among patients with diabetes (PI: Rubin, R01DK122073) and of a study to enhance phenotype definitions using NLP and to perform genetic analyses of sleep apnea and insomnia (PI: Cade, NHLBI R01HL153805).  

Geisinger has one of the largest biobanks, the MyCode Community Health Initiative (MyCode). We leverage genomic and EHR data to study the genetic architecture of chronic conditions and how to incorporate genomic data for clinical purposes. One example is the multi-site analysis I am leading in the PsycheMERGE network (PI: Smoller J, Davis L, NIMH R01MH118233) to estimate the association of polygenic risk scores of psychiatric conditions (bipolar, schizophrenia, major depression disorder) with healthcare utilization. 

Geisinger has supported the philosophy of a learning healthcare system through their constant innovation and implementation of new care delivery models. Related to this effort is the practice of rigorous evaluation of new clinical programs. I currently lead the evaluation for several large clinical programs and co-chair the newly formed Implementation and Evaluation Steering Committee.