My resume is here
Accomplished Ph.D. data scientist and health economist with over 10 years of expertise in advanced statistical analysis, machine learning and outcome research. Proven track record in developing and executing end-to-end advanced analytics and data science projects tailored to the needs of payers, policymakers and health systems.
WORK EXPERIENCE
Associate Director – Health Equity Analytics and Data Strategy January 2023 –now
United Health Group – Greater Philadelphia, PA
· Lead retrospective research studies and advanced analytic projects to evaluate health disparities and health equity across UnitedHealth Group businesses and insurance products, influencing targeted interventions.
· Oversee analyses of large healthcare claims (UHC and Optum® databases), authorization/appeal data, and external data (SDoH) with focus on data transformation, machine learning (e.g., cluster analysis, random forest, gradient boosting) and statistical approaches (e.g., propensity scores matching, GLM, causal inference, survival analysis) to generate insights for interventions and policy advocacy.
· Develop internal tools and analytics using Tableau in collaboration with data scientists, clinicians, and providers to improve health equity data availability and identify disparity gaps focusing on HEDIS and health outcomes.
Elevance Health – Greater Philadelphia, PA
· Led the development and implementation of advanced analytics studies across several disease areas (substance use disorders, diabetes, maternal health) using administrative medical and pharmacy claims.
· Built machine learning models to predict individuals’ health-related quality of life based on neighborhood social determinants of health data, self-reported health-related social needs and administrative claims.
· Led the development of the Whole Health Index (WHI), focusing on social and physical factors of health. WHI is widely used across the enterprise to measure, track, manage and improve individual and population health of more than 40 million Elevance Health members.
· Designed scientific evaluation of external digital health products and digital therapeutics to inform payer policies.
CareSkore – Mountain View, CA
· Led the data science team in the end-to-end development of machine learning and predictive analytics models, focusing on patient risk profiling (sepsis, readmission, mortality) and predicting health care costs and utilization.
· Conducted extensive research, including literature reviews and monitoring of new scientific and methodological developments, to meet specific customer use cases and improve model performance.
· Built and mentored a high-performing, customer-focused data science team of 3 data scientists, fostering professional growth and ensuring effective collaboration.
· Partnered with product, engineering, marketing, and sales operations teams to define product roadmaps, release plans and guide the successful deployment of machine learning models.
UnitedHealth Group – Health Services Research, Market Insights Group – Mountain View, CA
· Designed and conducted systematic literature reviews, exploratory analyses, health services research and economic research on insurance benefit design (high-deductible health plan and health saving accounts), decision analytic modelling and program evaluation.
· Collaborated and communicated with cross-functional stakeholders to understand business needs and challenges, formulated and completed suitable studies.
· Presented research results at national conferences.
American Cancer Society – Economic & Health Policy Program, Intramural Research, Atlanta, GA
· Spearheaded prospective and retrospective observational studies to assess cancer disease burdens, healthcare resource utilization, treatment costs, and to develop economic models evaluating the effectiveness of cancer therapies.
· Conducted epidemiological and economic studies to investigate diet, physical activities, and policies in relation to cancer prevention, cancer incidence, and mortality.
· Authored 10+ scientific papers, resulting in conference presentations and gaining recognition in various media outlets.
University of Illinois at Chicago – Institute for Health Research and Policy – Chicago, IL
· Managed and analysed large healthcare datasets using SAS, SQL and Stata, wrote codebook for the project team, presented research findings at national conferences and published results in academic journals.
Amgen Inc – Global Health Economics Department – Thousand Oaks, CA
· Designed and executed observational studies using a large database of electronic oncology records.
· Obtained training on cost-effectiveness analysis and cost-benefit analysis.
University of Illinois at Chicago – Department of Economics – Chicago IL
· Skills: predictive modelling, cluster analysis, random forest, gradient boosting, regression analysis, classification, outcome research, experimental design, hypothesis testing, causal inference.
· Program: SAS, Python, SQL, R, Stata, Tableau, TensorFlow, PySpark, AWS.