Rare Diseases

Consultant to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and other healthcare venues in the areas of pharmacoepidemiology, drug safety, health outcomes, and evidence-based medicine. Provide expertise in study design, claims-based observational studies, real-world treatment patterns, protocol development, and report/manuscript writing.

Lead the design and implementation of a retrospective analytical study utilizing real-world data sources (e.g., healthcare databases, electronic health records) to assess safety and effectiveness of therapeutics used in the treatment of patients with mpox (formerly known as MonkeyPox).

Conducted complex healthcare outcomes and economics research projects as part of a team to meet the needs of pharmaceutical clients. Led teams in extracting and analyzing data from large, claims-based databases, including MarketScan, the Social Security Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), to support retrospective analyses focusing on burden of illness, risk factors for disease, and real-world treatment patterns. Conducted background literature review, developed analysis plans/research protocols, collaborated with project team members to effectively implement complex research methodologies, performed quality assurance investigations on diagnostic, descriptive, and statistical output, and created deliverables to communicate results, including final reports, slide decks, abstracts, posters, and manuscripts.

Provided analytic consulting support as part of a team delivering healthcare information and consulting services to Georgia Medicaid and the State Health Benefits Plan. Provided customer service to Department of Community Health staff, data quality investigations, user education and training, advanced analytic reporting, as well as conducted analyses on health care cost, access, utilization, and quality, analyses of specific health care issues, and supported team members with database design and analytic activities, including test plan development and data quality resolution strategies.

Conducted immunization research and analyzed corresponding data from in American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands. Accomplishments include:• Traveled to aforementioned islands to conduct immunization coverage research • Developed survey questionnaires, created databases to store and analyze data, cleaned and analyzed data in SAS and wrote reports for each Island’s Immunization programs• Presented findings for Immunization Program stakeholders and at conferences, including an oral presentation of “Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination Coverage and Timeliness in Children, American Samoa, 2008-2009” at the Pacific Global Health Conference (October 2011)

Responsible for conducting nationwide surveillance for enteric disease outbreaks. Duties include: serving as a liaison between the States and the CDC to ensure proper reporting of outbreaks, developing databases to store and analyze data, maintaining and evaluating surveillance systems, providing training on use of the web-based reporting system to state partners, cleaning and analyzing data, writing manuscripts for publication, and reviewing grant proposals. Accomplishments include: • Designing and developing the database for rapid deployment for the large-scale, high-profile tomato/pepper/cilantro-associated S. Saintpaul outbreak, which required complex techniques to allow for simultaneous data entry.• serving as the surveillance epidemiologist on a field investigation of shigellosis in daycare centers in Jackson, MS, including development of a database for the investigation and analyzing of data using SAS• Presenting “Foodborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance at the CDC” to international partners• collaborating with the Division of Parasitic Diseases, Division of Viral Diseases,and Northrup Grumman IT specialists for the development of a new web based National Outbreak Reporting System (NORS)

Responsible for the direction of the Epidemiology and Disease Control Program. Duties include: supervision of employees, ongoing communicable disease surveillance and reporting using Merlin and EpiCom, investigating outbreaks of communicable diseases, building working relationships with hospital infection control practitioners and area physicians to encourage timely and accurate disease reporting, disaster and emergency plan writing, generation of monthly epidemiology and surveillance newsletters, training of staff, conducting assessments of animal bite reports and exposures for rabies control and prophylaxis, performing quality improvement to monitor the effectiveness of outreach activities. Also served as the Influenza Coordinator, which included recruiting sentinel physicians to participate in influenza surveillance and submitting surveillance data to the Florida Department of Health and then on to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.