Nicole is a third-year student in the Decision Sciences concentration of the
Ph.D. Program in Health Policy at Harvard University and a past recipient of a
traineeship from the National Library of Medicine. She is currently a fellow in
the Program in Cancer Outcomes Research Training
. Her research interests involve economic evaluation of screening and treatment strategies for infectious diseases in developing countries, and she just finished work that was published in the American Journal of Medicine on the cost-effectiveness of treatment for hepatitis C in an urban cohort co-infected with HIV. Prior to enrolling in the doctoral program, she worked as a research assistant at Partners in Health and the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at Harvard Medical School. She received a M.S. degree in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2005.
Natalie Carvalho
Natalie is a second year student in the Decision Science track of the Health Policy PhD program. She did her undergraduate degree at McGillUniversity and has a Masters in Public Health from BostonUniversity, with a concentration in Epidemiology. During her MPH, Natalie worked at The Catalyst Center, investigating state and nation-wide policies pertaining to health care financing for children and youth with special health care needs. Prior to joining the Health Policy program, Natalie spent two years as a research fellow at the Harvard Initiative for Global Health.Her previous research focused on priority-setting of health interventions in Mexico using cost-effectiveness analysis. Natalie hopes to work on health issues affecting developing countries. Her research interests include health inequalities, maternal and child health, chronic diseases, health insurance mechanisms, and economic analyses for allocation of resources in resource-poor settings. Her current research involves cost-effectiveness analyses of interventions for reducing maternal mortality in Afghanistan.
Dan entered the Ph.D. Program in Health Policy at Harvard University in the fall of 2006. He is currently involved with two research projects. The first aims to estimate the shape of HIV/AIDS prevalence curves in resource-poor countries, and the second involves simulating study designs for upcoming surveys to re-estimate disability weights for global burden of disease analyses. Prior to entering the program, Dan completed an MPH in Epidemiology with a concentration in International Health at the University of Michigan where he conducted research on the social and environmental determinants of schistosomiasis infection. From 2003-2004, he worked as a research assistant at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, where he developed a transmission model of HIV/AIDS that allowed for comparisons of the cost-effectiveness of prevention and treatment-based interventions for sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Dan studied ecology as an undergraduate and received his A.B. from Dartmouth College in 2000.
April is a fourth year student
in the Ph.D. Program in Health Policy at Harvard University. She
served as Senior Project Manager for the Cost-Effectiveness of
Preventing AIDS Complications (CEPAC) team for many years before
entering the Ph.D. Program. April has collaborated with CEPAC team
members by using a computer simulation model to address questions on
HIV prevention and treatment interventions in the U.S., France, Côte
d'Ivoire, India, the Caribbean, and South Africa. Her research with
the team has focused on informing HIV clinical and laboratory
monitoring policy both in the U.S. and developing country settings. Her
current research focuses on efficiency and ethical considerations in
the allocation of resources for HIV/AIDS treatment in developing
countries. By combining quantitative, analytical, and research skills,
she aims to examine health-related issues at both the technical and
policy levels and to convey findings in ways that will influence health
policy experts and decision makers. April earned an A.B. in History
from Dartmouth College in 1996, and a M.S. in Population and
International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2004.
She is a former recipient of a Health Policy Training Program
Fellowship (AHRQ T32 HS000055) and current recipient of an HIV Clinical
Research Fellowship (NIH T32 AI007433).
Tara is a second year student in the Ph.D. Program in Health Policy at Harvard University. Prior to entering the Program, she worked as a project coordinator in the Economic and Quality of Life Assessments Group at the Harvard Clinical Research Institute. While at HCRI, she worked to oversee the collection and analysis of data for cost-effectiveness studies conducted alongside multi-center clinical trials. Tara graduated from Tufts University in 1999 with a B.S. in Biology and from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2006 with an M.S. in Health Policy and Management.
Nicolas Menzies
Nick entered the PhD Program in Health Policy at Harvard University in the fall of 2008. Before joining the program Nick worked with Macro International, a research consulting company, providing technical assistance within the Global AIDS Program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With the CDC, Nick conducted economic evaluation and implementation research on HIV/AIDS control interventions in countries supported by the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). He was investigator on studies examining the cost-effectiveness of HIV counseling and testing strategies, screening of exposed infants, and HIV treatment in Botswana, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Vietnam. Nick also developed budget impact models of PEPFAR-funded HIV treatment and healthcare workforce investments during the congressional reauthorization of the program, and worked with the 2007 UNAIDS-WHO collaboration on task-shifting to address health worker shortages. Prior to 2003 Nick worked as a hospital dentist in beautiful New Zealand, and holds a BDS (2000) and DipPH (2003) from Otago University, New Zealand, and a MPH (2005) from Emory University.
Ankur Pandya entered the Harvard Ph.D. Program in Health Policy in fall 2007. His current research focuses on developing microsimulation models that can be used to estimate the cost-effectiveness of various cardiovascular interventions in developed and developing countries. As a methodological area of interest, he is exploring several techniques to calibrate disease models such that model-generated results accurately reflect the distributions of cardiovascular outcomes across settings. Prior to entering the Ph.D. Program, he worked for i3 Innovus, a health economics/outcomes research consulting firm. During his tenure at i3 Innovus, his work focused on designing and programming cost-effectiveness models in therapeutic areas such as cervical cancer and cardiovascular disease. He holds a B.S. from Cornell University in Nutritional Sciences, and an M.P.H. from Yale University in Health Policy and Administration; he is a recipient of a traineeship from the National Library of Medicine.
Chara Rydzak is an M.D./Ph.D. student in Health Policy at Harvard University and at Harvard Medical School (HMS). A recipient of the National Institute of Mental Health Trainee Grant (2004-2006) and the HIV Clinical Research Training Fellowship (2006-2007), she has completed her second year at HMS and a third year of Ph.D. work in the Health Policy program with a concentration in Decision Sciences. She is currently involved in several research projects focusing on the evaluation of diagnosis and treatment of syphilis in pregnant Sub-Saharan African women; the impact of mental health status and domestic violence on earnings of low-income women; and HIV modeling and model calibration of screening, treatment and vaccination strategies. She graduated from Stanford University in 2000 with a B.A. in Human Biology and English and spent two years working as a Research Health Services Specialist for the V.A. Health Care System at Stanford University's Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research (PCOR) before beginning her M.D.-Ph.D. work at Harvard University.
Davene a third year a doctoral student in the Ph.D. Program in Health Policy at Harvard University.
She received her Bachelors in Polymer and Textile Chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004.
Before coming to Harvard, she was a research assistant and ORISE Fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, where she worked in the CDC's Chronic Disease Nutrition Branch and the Office of Genomics and Disease Prevention.
She was also a research assistant and programmer at Mathematica Policy Research, a social policy research firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she worked on several evaluations of government health programs. Her research interests center around modeling obesity interventions. She aims to create a simulation model of social networks to test community obesity prevention and treatment strategies.
She is a former recipient of an AHRQ Training Fellowship and current recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
Emma Westermann-Clark, B.S., is a student in the Harvard doctoral program in Health Policy. She has completed
three years of medical school at the University of Florida, and she has a B.S.
in biochemistry and molecular biology. Her doctoral dissertation research
focuses on the cost-effectiveness and feasibility of various strategies to
overcome immunologic barriers in kidney transplantation. She is
also interested in how organs are allocated and inequities in kidney
transplantation. She is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate
Student Fellowship.