Brigham & Women's Hospital - Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmaeconomics Fellowship Directors

Aaron S. Kesselheim, M.D., J.D., M.P.H.*

Fellowship Site Director
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Aaron S. Kesselheim, M.D, J.D, MPH, is a Professor of Medicine at HMS, leader of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (www.PORTALresearch.org), and a general internist. He leads an interdisciplinary research center focusing on clinical, societal, and other factors that affect the value and evidence based use of prescription drugs and medical devices and how to optimize policies affecting those issues to improve patient health outcomes. He has testified before Congress on pharmaceutical policy, medical device regulation, generic drugs, and modernizing clinical trials, and is a member of the FDA Peripheral and Central Nervous System Advisory Committee. His work has been funded by the Arnold Ventures, Greenwall Faculty Scholar in Bioethics Program, the Commonwealth Fund, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the FDA, and AHRQ, among others. In recognition of his dedication to mentorship, Dr. Kesselheim received HMS’s Young Mentor Award in 2015-2016. He recently developed a massive open online course called Prescription Drug Regulation, Cost, and Access: Current Controversies in Context disseminated via the HarvardX platform to over 80,000 participants world-wide. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics and a member of the Perspectives advisory board for the New England Journal of Medicine. In the fall of 2020, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

Faculty Members

Jerry Avorn, M.D.

Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Chief of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics

The scientific, policy, and social factors that shape physicians’ drug choices
Medication compliance by patients
The identification and prevention of adverse drug effects; programs to improve the appropriateness of prescribing and drug taking
Pharmaceutical cost-effectiveness analysis

Brian T. Bateman, M.D.
Associate Professor of Anesthesia, Harvard Medical School

Epidemiology of pregnancy complication and antihypertensive medications in pregnancy
Patterns of medication use and drug safety in the perioperative period

Niteesh K. Choudhry, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Impact of medication costs and drug benefit design on the use of and adherence to medications for common chronic conditions, such as coronary artery disease, hyperlipidemia and diabetes.

Michael A. Fischer, M.D., M.S.
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Factors that influence medication use and outcomes by clinicians and patients
Appropriate use of medications, drug evaluation, and assessment of complications of drug therapy.

Jessica M. Franklin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Developing and applying statistical methods for comparative effectiveness and adverse effects of drugs, the consequences of drug policy, and the prevention of human error in medication use
Causal inference and Bayesian and hierarchical modeling

Joshua J. Gagne, Pharm.D., Sc.D.
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Methods for generating post-marketing comparative safety and effectiveness evidence for new medical products.

Robert J. Glynn, Ph.D., Sc.D.
Professor of Medicine (in Biostatistics), Harvard Medical School
Associate Professor of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Design and analysis of studies of risk factors and treatments for chronic diseases
Designing, monitoring, and analyzing data from large-scale randomized trials, prospective cohort studies, and case-control studies
Accounting for missing data, analysis of clustered data, and approaches to identify and adjust for selection bias

Krista F. Huybrechts, M.S., Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Assessment of adverse outcomes associated with psychotropic medication use in different populations and settings, including elderly nursing home patients and pregnant women.
Exploring how variation in medication prescribing at the level of the physician or institution can be used to improve confounding control in observational studies in the area of psychiatry.

Seo Young Kim, M.D., M.S.C.E.
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Comparative safety and effectiveness of medications for the rheumatic diseases, health services/outcome research in rheumatology.

Ameet Sarpatwari, Ph.D., J.D.
Assistant Professor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School

The effects of laws and regulations on therapeutic development, approval, use, and related public health outcomes; with current focus on drug product selection laws, risk evaluation and mitigation strategies, and regulatory and patent exclusivities.

Sebastian Schneeweiss, M.D., Sc.D.

Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Harvard Medical School

The comparative effectiveness and safety of biopharmaceuticals and analytic methods to improve the validity of epidemiologic studies using complex healthcare databases.