Dr. Avery joined the Cornell University faculty in 1988. She served on the Cornell University Board of Trustees 2008-2012. Dr. Avery teaches the introductory course to the Public Policy major, PAM 2301 Introduction to Public Policy, and an undergraduate course in child welfare policy Dr. Avery’s research projects focus on the impact of advertising of pharmaceutical products on the health-related behavior of individuals.
Two over-arching themes of Dr. Yuhua Bao’s research are: 1. Aligning provider payment models with evidence-based care for mental health and substance use conditions, and 2. Studies of policies relating to access, use, and outcomes of psychotropic and pain medications. Dr. Bao is currently funded by NIDA, NIMH, NCI, and the American Cancer Society. She is devoted to mentoring and leads the mentoring programs at the NIDA Center of Excellence (P30) known as CHERISH.
Dr. R. Tyler Braun’s research focuses on the organization and financing of physician practices, hospices, and long-term care providers, with a particular interest in oversight, enforcement, and consolidation by institutional investors. He leads studies examining healthcare consolidation and his work has been published in top journals such as NEJM and JAMA and has received attention from policymakers and major media outlets.
Dr. Colleen Carey’s research focuses on public policy for the health care industry, with special attention to federal regulation of health insurance markets. She has previously worked at University of Michigan and Princeton University, and in Federal policy roles at the Council of Economic Advisers and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Dr. Lawrence Casalino is interested in the causes and consequences of corporatization and consolidation in health care, particularly with regard to acquisition of physician practices by large health insurance companies, hospitals, and private equity firms. Why is this happening, and what are the consequences for the quality and cost of care, patient experience, and physician professionalism? Relatedly, he is interested in antitrust in health care, ACOs, and the causes and consequences of growth in Medicare Advantage.
Dr. John Cawley is a health economist whose primary field of research is the economics of risky health behaviors, with a focus on the economics of obesity. He studies the economic causes of obesity, the economic consequences of obesity, and economic approaches to obesity treatment and prevention.
Dr. Yasin Civelek, a health economist, researches healthcare systems, social determinants of health, and health impacts of climate change. He examines how provider incentives affect spending and quality, addresses disparities through Medicaid’s non-emergency transportation and health literacy interventions in low-resource settings, and studies policy solutions to mitigate climate-related health risks. His work aims to improve care and equity for vulnerable populations in the U.S. and developing countries.
Dr. Ali Jalali is a health economist and econometrician specializing in healthcare policy and economic evaluations of healthcare interventions for substance use disorders and related conditions among high-risk populations. His methodological research addresses challenging data analytic problems that arise when study participants are located in complex settings (e.g., jails, prisons, emergency departments) and when studies employ diverse data sources (clinical trials, electronic medical records, and health insurance claims).
Dr. Arian Jung’s research focuses on the organizational structure of health care delivery in long-term care settings. She studies how clinician specialization and physician responses to incentives created by Medicare policies impact the quality and cost of care in nursing homes. Additionally, she studies the relationship between telehealth use in nursing homes and resident outcomes.
Dr. Pragya Kakani is a health economist and uses the tools of applied microeconomics to study questions related to efficiency and equity in US health care markets. Her primary areas of focus include pharmaceutical and pharmacy policy, health care quality, and the intersection of these topics. Some of her recent and ongoing work focuses on prescription drug pricing, formulary restrictions, biosimilar adoption, and integration between physicians, hospitals, and pharmacies in oncology.
Dr. Donald Kenkel is a health economist who studies the effects of public policies including taxation and regulations on health behaviors. His current research mainly focuses on tobacco regulation, including regulations of e-cigarettes and other products that provide users with nicotine without the combustion of tobacco or the harmful by-products of combustion. His research also addresses methods to conduct cost-benefit analysis of health policies.
Dr. Derek Lake is a health services researcher in the Division of Health Policy and Economics of the Department of Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine. His current research is focused both on how payment and delivery reform affect healthcare spending and outcomes among older Americans, and the impact of the consolidation of healthcare markets on patients.
Dr. Neil Lewis, Jr. is a behavioral and intervention scientist. His research examines the motivational, behavioral, and equity implications of social interventions and policies. He is interested in the consequences of these processes not only for individuals, but also for the communities, organizations, and societies those individuals are embedded in. Much of his work has a particular focus on understanding (and addressing) inequality in education, health, and environmental outcomes.
Dr. William Lodge II is a behavioral and social scientist dedicated to advancing health equity and HIV prevention and care among gender and sexual minorities, both in the U.S. and globally. Lodge’s work focuses on how social and structural determinants—such as stigma and discriminatory policies—impact health outcomes. He employs an intersectional approach and community-engaged research to address these issues. As a member of the Cornell NIH FIRST cohort, funded by the NIH Common Fund’s Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) Program, Lodge strives to diversify the biomedical research field. Through research and teaching in Global Health, he critically engages with public health and policy to advocate for equitable health solutions for marginalized populations.
Dr. Alan Mathios is an economist who studies how regulations impact health. A major focus of his research is on the effect of Food and Drug Administration policies on consumer and firm behavior. His work has analyzed the regulation of health claims for food products, the regulation of tobacco products (cigarettes, e-cigarettes, nicotine replacement therapies), the regulation of pharmaceutical direct-to-consumer advertising, and the regulation of health warnings and disclosures.
Dr. Meinhofer specializes in health economics, policy, and applied microeconomics. Her research program aims to elucidate the direct and intergenerational effects of substance use disorder, as well as the role of drug, public health, Medicaid, and child welfare policies in modifying these effects.
Dr. Jamila Michener studies American politics and policy, with a particular focus on the political causes and consequences of poverty and racial inequality. Her work explores the conditions under which economically and racially disadvantaged groups engage in the political process, the effects of that engagement, and the role of the state in shaping the political and economic trajectories of marginalized communities.
Dr. Kelly Musick studies family change, social inequality, and their implications for the health and well-being of parents and children. She has published on the social context of childbearing, gender and parenting, and the mechanisms linking family environments to healthy child development, in outlets such as the American Sociological Review, Demography, and Journal of Marriage and Family. She is Cornell lead for the NIA-funded Center for Aging and Policy Studies and NICHD-funded undergraduate pipeline program NextGenPop.
Dr. Todd Olmstead studies health economics, using methods including cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and cost-utility analysis to study a range of topics including cancer, mental health, and substance use. His work has been cited by the Council of Economic Advisors in their Annual Economic Report the President and used to inform policy at the state and local levels.
Dr. Adriana Reyes’ health policy research covers two dimensions of policy: attitudes towards policy and how policy environments shape health equity outcomes. Most of her work focuses on the health of older adults and their families. This work aims to understand attitudes towards aging policy with an emphasis on how policies can better support family caregiving for older adults. Additionally, she explores the relationship between policy environments and the health of immigrant and other minoritized populations.
Dr. Michael Richards primarily studies the effects of payment policies, insurance expansions, and regulations on health care providers. His empirical research also explores recent market dynamics tied to health care ownership and consolidation (e.g., mergers and acquisitions, vertical integration, and private equity investments) throughout the US health care system, with implications for regulatory guidance and policy.
Dr. Sunita Sah is a physician turned organizational psychologist dedicated to improving decision-making and trust to reduce inequalities in healthcare and society. She teaches leadership, negotiations, and critical thinking at Cornell University’s College of Business. Her research on conflicts of interest, disclosure, and professionalism has been recognized with a Mid-Career Achievement Award from the Academy of Management’s Healthcare Management Division. Passionate about creating a more just and equitable world, she uses multi-method approaches to shape health policies and enhance well-being.
Dr. Bruce Schackman is Director of the Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorder, HCV, and HIV (CHERISH), a multi-institutional center of excellence funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Dr. Schackman conducts economic evaluations of health interventions alongside clinical trials, cohort studies and implementation studies, as well as cost-effectiveness simulation modeling, particularly relating to treatment of infectious diseases and substance use disorders.
Dr. Sri Lekha Tummalapalli is a nephrologist and health services researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine. Her research focuses on improving quality of care for patients with kidney disease and other chronic diseases. She primarily studies 1) value-based care models, 2) strategies to incorporate social factors in payment models, 3) alignment of quality measures with evidence-based care, and 4) factors driving novel therapeutic adoption.
Kristen Underhill, JD, DPhil, studies how laws and policies shape health behavior. Her recent work focuses on Medicaid waivers, postpartum health, prenatal and postpartum drug use laws, minors’ capacity to consent to health care, sex education laws, and health insurance coverage of behavioral interventions. Prior work has included studies of health care discrimination and access to PrEP for HIV prevention.
Dr. Mark A. Unruh studies the quality and cost of care for older adults with an emphasis on post-acute care and long-term services and supports. This includes studies of the relationships between the structure and level of provider reimbursements, as well as ownership structures, on the quality of care provided in these settings.
Dr. Jiebing Wen’s work focuses on applying quasi-experimental econometrics techniques to claims data analysis to answer research questions centering around the intended and unintended impact of health policies. Her current research revolves around the impact of Telehealth adoption, and acquisitions of healthcare agencies on the quality and cost of care for Medicare beneficiaries, as well as physician burnout and turnover.
Dr. Charley Willison is a political scientist studying public health political decision-making, focusing on explaining policy outcomes for the most disadvantaged. Her two primary substantive areas of research are homelessness and disaster response. Her 2021 book, Ungoverned and Out of Sight: Public Health and the Political Crisis of Homelessness in the United States (Oxford University Press) won the 2022 American Political Science Association’s Urban and Local Politics Dennis Judd Best Book Award.
Dr. Jiani Yu’s research focuses on three interrelated focal streams: evolving models of telehealth and telehealth coverage expansions, post-acute and long-term care for older adults, and provider staffing and workforce issues. As a health services researcher with specialized training in health economics, she focuses primarily on quasi-experimental study designs, causal inference methods, and large administrative and clinical datasets to evaluate the consequences of interventions, health care decisions, and policy changes.
Dr. Yongkang Zhang’s research focuses on leveraging machine learning and big datasets to improve healthcare delivery for medical complex and socially vulnerable individuals, such as older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) and individuals from racial/ethnic minoritized groups. His recent projects examine end-of-life care among ADRD patients, integrated care models for Medicare-Medicaid dually eligibles, and social drivers for cardiovascular health in New York City. He has received awards from AcademyHealth, APHA, and other organizations.
Dr. Czarina Behrends works with community-based programs and health departments to evaluate innovative harm reduction and health service delivery approaches for people who use drugs. Dr. Behrends is involved in research that evaluates harm reduction-related policies and its impact on service delivery. She has conducted research on HIV and hepatitis testing policies in substance use disorder treatment programs, and is interested in policies that impact low-threshold delivery of medications for opioid use disorder.
Dr. Julie Carmalt is a demographer by training with primary research and teaching interests in population health, population health management, public health policy, the social determinants of health, and health equity.
Dr. Corinne Catarozoli is the Co-Director of Behavioral Health Integration and Innovation in Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine. She oversees mental health services embedded across all pediatric medical settings and has expertise in pediatric integrated care program development. Dr. Catarozoli specializes in treating anxiety disorders and working with youth facing acute and chronic medical illness. She is active with advocacy efforts to improve access to evidence-based mental health treatments for youth.
Tanzeem Choudhury is a Professor of Computing and Information Sciences at Cornell Tech and the director of The Health Tech Hub at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute. Tanzeem holds the Roger and Joelle Burnell Chair in Integrated Health and Technology. From 2021-2023, she served as the Senior Vice President of Digital Health at Optum Labs (part of UnitedHealth Group). She is a co-founder of two mental health AI startups – HealthRhythms that was founded in 2014 and Dapple Health that was founded in 2024. Tanzeem’s research is the intersection of wearable computing, AI, and health. She and her group have conducted some of the earliest research in digital mental health.
Alexandra directs the State Policy Advocacy Clinic, which works on a number of health access and equity projects affecting children and families in upstate New York. The Clinic is currently working with community stakeholders, health care providers, academic researchers, and state and local legislators and policymakers on the following projects: expanding access to health care for students in rural areas and their preschool aged siblings, improving enforcement of laws restricting the sale of flavored vapes to children, improving health care for pregnant and postpartum parents and their infants in New York prisons and jails, reducing overdose deaths by incorporating naloxone training and access in health class in high schools, and improving unhealthy housing conditions for farmworkers and their children.
Dr. Roger Figueroa’s health policy work includes equity-focused policy advocacy and improvements in federal food policies to address food insecurity, diet quality, health, and sustainability concurrently. Additionally, as the Society of Behavioral Medicine Advocacy Council Chair (2022-2025), he leads a team of health policy advocacy ambassadors nationwide on child nutrition, climate change, and related national priorities. This role is relevant to published policy briefs and public scholarship to inform climate resilience and nutrition assistance legislation.
Dr. Arnab Ghosh’s work focuses on climate change, health, and health equity. His policy interests focus on understanding climate-related healthcare costs in the short and long-term and how these vary across class, race, age, and gender, assessment of natural capital investments, and the use of policy to prevent morbidity and mortality from climate-amplified threats (e.g., extreme heat, hurricanes, and flood risk).
Dr. Cori Green is the Vice Chair of Behavioral Health Integration and Innovation and the Program Director for Behavioral Health Education and Integration within Pediatrics at Cornell. A nationally recognized leader in mental health education, Dr. Green’s clinical and research focus is the integration of mental health care into the pediatric settings.
Dr. Matt Hall is a demographer whose research focuses on immigration, racial/ethnic inequality, population change, and demographic methods. His research interests focus on understanding the consequences of intensified interior immigration enforcement, the link between immigration status and child development, describing patterns of racial discrimination in US housing markets, and the development of data science tools for demographic estimation.
Dr. Sylvia Hristakeva’s research spans quantitative marketing and empirical industrial organization, focusing on how vertical contracts, competition, and advertising shape firm strategies and consumer outcomes in both retail and health care markets. On the health care side, her work includes analyzing the impact of government-mandated pharmaceutical price caps, the effects of drug injury advertising, and the influence of Ozempic’s adoption on grocery shopping behaviors.
Dr. Shashi Kapadia is an infectious diseases physician and health services researcher whose work has focused on the equitable delivery of healthcare for people who use drugs. His ongoing work is focused on evaluating and improving treatment access for infectious diseases such as HIV, hepatitis C, and bacterial infections among people who use drugs. He has skills in observational clinical-epidemiologic research, in health economic and policy analyses, and has experience with clinical trials.
Dr. Tashara M. Leak is a nutrition scientist and health-equity researcher who: 1) examines sociodemographic disparities in nutrition and health, 2) designs, implements, and evaluates culturally inclusive, theory-informed interventions that aim to improve nutrition and health outcomes among marginalized populations, and 3) uses dissemination and implementation approaches to sustain and scale evidence-based interventions to inform nutrition and health policy. This work is funded by city, state, and federal grants (e.g., USDA, NIH).
Dr. Gen Meredith is a public health researcher-practitioner with experience across local, clinical, state, and international levels. Gen uses community-engaged methods to develop, evaluate, and enhance public health systems, including through public health workforce capacity building. Gen’s applied research focuses on engaged pedagogical practices for workforce development; optimized public health systems utilization including data-informed decision making; community capacity building for collective impact; and innovations to improve access to the upstream health benefits of nature engagement.
Dr. Murphy is a trained health economist with expertise in chronic-condition management with an emphasis in substance use disorders and related conditions. Murphy’s research includes comparative economic evaluations alongside clinical trials and cohort studies, claims-based analyses, and evaluating determinants of treatment access, outcomes, and adverse effects.
Dr. Odoms-Young’s work is focused on social and structural determinants of dietary behaviors, food and nutrition security, and related health outcomes (e.g. CVD, obesity, pregnancy, etc.) in low-income populations and Black, Indigenous, and people of color. She is also particularly interested in identifying culturally responsive programs and policies that promote health equity, food justice, and community resilience and be scaled nationally. Other interests include: Qualitative Methods; Life Course Approach; Power Shifting Strategies; Healing Narratives and Reparative/Anti-Racist Praxis; and Community-based Participatory Research.
Dr. Sallie Permar is a physician scientist whose work focuses on the prevention and treatment of neonatal viral infections and the immunology of the maternal-fetal interface. In addition to caring for patients with congenital infections, she leads a research laboratory investigating immune protection against vertical transmission of neonatal viral pathogens, including HIV-1, cytomegalovirus, and Zika.
Dr. Isabel M Perera studies health policy in comparative perspective. Her book, The Welfare Workforce: Why Mental Health Care Varies Across Affluent Democracies (Cambridge University Press, Studies in Comparative Politics series) explores the comparative political economy of psychiatric de-institutionalization and shows the crucial role played by public sector unions in shaping alternative policy outcomes. Other work has appeared in The Lancet, Psychiatric Services, the American Journal of Public Health, and the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law. Her training includes a doctorate in political science and a post-doctoral fellowship in medical ethics and health policy, both from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Laura Pinheiro works at the intersection of cancer, primary care, and racial disparities to improve health outcomes and health equity. Her work uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to develop and rigorously evaluate real-world interventions to optimize healthcare delivery for underserved cancer patients.
Dr. Peter Rich is a sociologist who researches the reciprocal relationship between spatial context and inequality in the US. His work uses computational and demographic decomposition methods to understand the underlying structural sources of disparities in education, housing, and health. In several new projects, Peter is examining how community exposure to institutional resources, such as School Based Health Centers, and institutional stressors, such as driver’s license suspensions, contribute to health and well-being. Peter received his PhD in Sociology from New York University.
Dr. Laura Riley is an internationally recognized expert on obstetrics infectious diseases. She has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies to develop practice guidelines for pregnancy care of women with Group B strep, Zika, Ebola, COVID-19, and influenza viruses.
Dr. Amelia Greiner Safi is a social and behavioral scientist with expertise in multilevel influences on health, strategic public health communication, health disparities and intervention planning. A common thread in her work is translational work – linking research to practice and policy. Dr. Safi’s research interests include cancer disparities, identifying and addressing discrimination in healthcare, and studying warning labels on cigarettes an e-cigarettes.
Dr. Nicholas J. Sanders’ research helps identify the costs and benefits of environmental quality and regulation. This includes how ambient air quality impacts mortality, cognitive development, and medical expenditure, as well as how individuals, markets, and firms respond to environmental regulation. Recent work explores the complex relationship between climate, weather, and human behavior, such as how intense heat raises the probability of violence in prisons.
Seth G. Sanders studies a range of topics in labor economics and economic demography including aging and cognition, race and gender gaps in earnings among the highly educated, the effects of extreme economic changes on workers and families, the performance of gay and lesbian families in the economy, and the economic consequences of teenage childbearing
Dr. Schuldt’s health policy research focuses on two areas. The first examines contextual factors that guide everyday judgment and decision-making, such as how survey question wording affects public opinion toward health policy or how advertising claims affect whether foods are perceived as healthy. The second examines the health equity implications of climate change and related considerations, including public understanding of its unequal health impacts across groups in society.
Dr. Martin Shaprio is a physician, health services researcher, and a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research for 25 years. He is the author of Getting Doctored: Critical Reflections on Becoming a Physician.
Dr. Robbyn Sockolow’s clinical interests include inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis), celiac disease, capsule endoscopy, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and GI disease related to Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Dr. Madeline Sterling is a general internist and health services researcher. Her research focuses on improving healthcare delivery for adults with chronic conditions through optimizing the care they receive at home. Specifically, she studies home health, and ways to leverage the home care workforce to improve patient outcomes. She conducts observational research that evaluates the impact of home-based services on outcomes, and leads a program of intervention and trial-based work that tests the effectiveness and implementation of interventions on worker and patient outcomes, in the real-world.
Dr. Bryan L. Sykes studies health policy issues within the U.S. criminal legal system, such as morbidity and mortality associated with incarceration and court-ordered rehabilitation programs for health concerns (substance abuse, domestic violence, anger management, etc.). He also investigates how national, regional, and global patterns of mortality, morbidity, fertility, and disability have changed over time, in collaboration with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), setting a global policy research agenda on population health.
Dr. Brandon Tripp is an economist specializing in behavioral economics.
Dr. Steffanie Wright is a board-certified Obstetrician and Gynecologist with subspecialty training in Complex Family Planning. She has a background in public health and a passion for global health and international development. Dr. Wright’s health policy interests primarily lie in reproductive health and family planning and include an interest in exploring the impact of local, state, and national policy on advancing (or hindering) access to reproductive health services including contraception and abortion.
Dr. Yunyu Xiao’s work focuses on addressing mental health disparities and suicide prevention through the lens of health equity. I use large-scale datasets, including population-based and electronic health records, to explore social determinants of health and their effects on vulnerable populations. By applying advanced data analytics and machine learning, I aim to inform policies and interventions that reduce disparities, particularly among children and high-risk communities affected by structural inequalities.
Dr. Qian Yang’s research investigates how technology product and policy innovation can catalyze responsible product innovation for social good. Her recent research explores this question in the context of the innovation of mental wellness and health tech products and their need for regulation. An AI product designer and empirical researcher by training, Yang collaborates with healthcare and policy experts regularly. Yang’s website is https://qianyang.co.
Dr. Zadeh specializes in evidence-based and human-centered healthcare design. Zadeh’s work focuses on improving quality-of-life and management of symptoms for individuals who experience chronic, advanced or life-limiting illness, and optimizing working environments and caring experience for their formal and informal caregivers.
