Introduction
I am a health economist and health services researcher. My interests are in the areas of applied health and behavioral economics, with a special focus on HIV treatment and prevention, and health systems in low- and middle-income countries. A large portion of my research in health economics has concerned the impact of health reform and insurance expansion decisions. My research on health systems reform has led to publications evaluating the impact of social health insurance programs (such as Seguro Popular in Mexico, the National Hospital Insurance Fund in Kenya, and Medicaid in the U.S.) on various economic and health outcomes. I have also published research on the effects of conditional and unconditional cash transfers (and economic incentives) for health behavior change, including incentives to exercise as well as incentives to improve HIV prevention and treatment outcomes. Other papers have concerned rigorous impact evaluations published in both scientific and policy journals including econometric analysis applications as well as economic efficiency research (such as cost-effectiveness, cost-benefit and cost-utility modeling studies).
Expert
I am a tenured Associate Professor of Health Services Policy and Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health, where I serve as Graduate Program Director for the Health Services Research doctoral program. I am a member of the Steering Committee for Brown University’s Population Studies and Training Center (PSTC), and an advisor to Brown University's Data Science Initiative.
I am an Affiliate of the Health Econometrics and Data Group at York University in the UK. Prior to Brown, I was a Researcher at the Institute for Business and Economics Research at the University of California at Berkeley, and at the Health Economics Division of the Mexican National Institute of Public Health (INSP), where I conducted research and taught for four years. I have also been a visiting professor at Boston University, Northeastern University, and at the Center for Population and Development Studies at Harvard University. I worked at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Ethiopia, as well as Mathematica Policy Research Inc., John Snow Inc., and Hellen Keller International; and have consulted for several international organizations including the World Bank, UNAIDS, World Health Organization, and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
I served as Associate Editor for BMC Health Services Research; and currently I am the Health Economics Deputy Editor for the Journal of the International AIDS Society.
Fields of expertise: Health and wellbeing