Research Scientist
CurrentChaired a multidisciplinary team of senior leaders, epidemiologists, and program managers to advise on research methodologies and human subjects protection in quality improvement projects and public health surveillance.Led an epidemiology team in creating Community Health Indicators dashboards using SQL, Python, ArcGIS, and Tableau, delivering key insights that informed health policy and strategic program development.Served as the Public Health Division Data Trustee and drafted data governance protocols for highly sensitive Personally Identifiable Information (PII).Provided testimony at state legislative sessions and analyzed proposed legislation to assess potential impacts on department operations, service provision, and community health.Developed and implemented regression, classification, and matching algorithms to estimate county-level costs of illness and analyze tract-level relationships between social determinants of health, morbidity, and mortality.Leveraged Python's parallel computing libraries to process and analyze large datasets—including hospital discharge data, commercial health insurance claims, and Medicaid claims—for estimating chronic disease prevalence.Built and maintained SQLite databases to store and efficiently query insurance claims and hospital discharge data.Designed a housing stability surveillance system utilizing Electronic Health Record data and Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) for data analysis.Authored peer-reviewed publications and reports on the connections between social determinants of health, extreme weather events, and health outcomes; findings featured in The New York Times and USA Today.Represented the Health Department on the Oregon Health Authority Public Health Institutional Review Board.
