HEOR Excellence—Application Award

For the paper, “Developing and validating a machine-learning algorithm to predict opioid overdose in Medicaid beneficiaries in two US states: a prognostic modelling study” 

Dr. Wei-Hsuan “Jenny” Lo-Ciganic is a pharmacoepidemiologist whose research focuses on improving drug safety, medication adherence, and the quality of prescribing, especially among vulnerable populations (e.g., geriatrics, Medicaid). Dr. Lo-Ciganic has extensive experience applying advanced predictive analytics including machine learning and group-based trajectory modeling with large healthcare datasets.

Since 2015, she has served as Principal Investigator (PI) and Co-Investigator (Co-I) on more than 17 extramurally-funded grants and contracts. Currently, she is the PI for the R01 study entitled “Developing and Evaluating a Machine-Learning Opioid Prediction & Risk-Stratification E-Platform (DEMONSTRATE)” and a lead investigator for the R01 grant entitled “Machine-Learning Prediction and Reducing Overdoses with EHR Nudges (mPROVEN)” funded by the National Institutes on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

She has published more than 90 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has an h-index of 21. She has extensive and successful mentoring experience PharmD, MS, and PhD students, post-doctoral fellows and residents, and junior faculty.

For the paper, “Quantifying the Burden of Hyperphagia in Prader-Willi Syndrome Using Quality-Adjusted Life-years” 

Dr. Lavelle is recognized for her expertise in investigating the preferences of patients, caregivers, and other stakeholders in the health care decision making process and incorporating these values into cost-effectiveness analyses. She has investigated the cost-effectiveness of a range of health interventions, including vaccines, medical devices, genomic sequencing, and pharmaceuticals. Dr. Lavelle earned her PhD in Health Policy with a concentration in Decision Science from Harvard University in 2012 and was previously a postdoctoral research fellow in the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit in the Division of General Pediatrics at the University of Michigan, and an Associate Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation.

For the paper, “Online tools to synthesize real-world evidence of comparative effectiveness research to enhance formulary decision making” 

For the paper, “Patient-Centered Preference Assessment to Improve Satisfaction With Care Among Patients With Localized Prostate Cancer: A Randomized Controlled Trial, Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2019” 

Dr. Jayadevappa is a Research Associate Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine, member of the Abramson Cancer center, and Fellow at the Institute of Aging, University of Pennsylvania. He has over 20 years of experience in analyzing the tradeoffs between economic efficiency, equity, and quality, and its implications for health disparities. His work focuses on micro and macro level health policy issues, patient-centered care, preference assessment, shared decision-making and comparative effectiveness in the context of cancers, Alzheimer’s, and depression. He is the principal and collaborative investigator on federal and non-federal funded grants, has primary authorship on over 70 peer-reviewed papers, is a referee for more than 25 medical journals, and serves as Editorial Board Member of several journals. He is a member of national and local organizations, including ISPOR, ASCO, AUA, SMDM, Academy Health, and serves on expert review committees for NIH, PCORI, AHRQ, DOD, and Denmark Cancer Society.

For the paper, “Value of Hospital Resources for Effective Pressure Injury Prevention: A Cost-effectiveness Analysis,” [published ahead of print July 16, 2018]. BMJ Qual Safe 2019;28:132–141. doi:10.1136/bmjqs-2017-007505.

William V. Padula, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics in the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at University of Southern California School of Pharmacy, and Principal for Monument Analytics. His research explores theoretical foundations of medical cost-effectiveness analysis for developing business cases to implement hospital quality improvement programs. He has performed comparative effectiveness and cost-effectiveness research to prevent hospital-acquired conditions, including pressure injuries and infections. He teaches applied health economics in the United States and globally with grant support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. During a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago, he received AHRQ funding to develop predictive algorithms of hospital safety events using electronic health records data. He received AcademyHealth’s 2015 Outstanding Dissertation Award. He has a PhD in Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research from the University of Colorado, 2 MS degrees in Analytics-University of Chicago, and Evaluative Clinical Science-Dartmouth College, and a BS in Chemical Engineering-Northwestern University..

For the paper, “Hospital Admissions for Myocardial Infarction and Stroke Before and After the Trans-Fatty Acid Restrictions in New York,” JAMA Cardiol 2017;2:627-634.

Rebecca Myerson, MPH, PhD, is an assistant professor at the University of Southern California and affiliate of USC’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. She holds a PhD in public policy with a concentration in applied econometrics from University of Chicago and an MPH from University of Washington. With the goal of informing policy to improve health, her research aims to quantify the impacts of policies on incidence and treatment of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Her health economics research assesses whether informing patients about their health biomarkers and health insurance options closes gaps in uptake of needed care. Specific projects have analyzed trans fat restrictions, screening interventions, assistance programs for health insurance enrollment, and Medicaid eligibility expansions. Rebecca has received research funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and a Fulbright Scholarship. Rebecca gratefully accepts this award on behalf of her coauthors, Eric Brandt, Marcelo Coca-Peraillon, and Tamar Polonsky.

For the paper, "Measuring the Sensitivity and Construct Validity of 6 Utility Instruments in 7 Disease Areas”, Med Decis Making 2016;36:147–159.

Jeff Richardson, PhD, is a Professor and Foundation Director of the Centre for Health Economics at Monash University. He has held honorary positions at Stanford University, the Australian National University and the University of South Australia and worked as a consultant for the WHO, AusAID (the Australian foreign aid organization), and the Australian Government chairing a 2004 review of the Tasmanian health system. He was president of the Australian Health Economics Society for 7 years and a member of the tribunal, which determines pharmaceutical remuneration for 16 years. His research has included the earliest econometric modelling of the Australian health system and the first use of Cost Utility Analysis in Australia. This led to the development of the AQoL suite of utility instruments, the AQoL website and an ethical analysis of the QALY (a book co-authored with Peter Singer). Recent work has focused upon social preferences for health outcomes. He has 213 unrefereed research reports and 195 peer reviewed articles or book chapters.

For the paper, "Prospective Benefit-Risk Monitoring of New Drugs for Rapid Assessment of Net Favorability in Electronic Health Care Data", Value Health. 2015; 18:1063-1069.

Dr Gagne is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. His research focuses on methods for generating post-approval comparative safety and effectiveness evidence for new medical products. He is Co-Lead of the Methods Core of the FDA Sentinel program. He teaches courses in pharmacoepidemiology and comparative-effectiveness research at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, where he co-directs the Pharmacoepidemiology Program. His research is funded by AHRQ, FDA, PCORI, and the Reagan-Udall Foundation. Dr Gagne earned his PharmD degree from the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy and his ScD degree in Epidemiology from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. He serves on the editorial boards of Drug Safety and Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety.

For the paper, "Economic Return From the Women's Health Initiative Estrogen Plus Progestin Clinical Trial: A Modeling Study", Ann Intern Med. 2014;160:594-602.

Dr Roth is an Assistant Member at the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy Program at the University of Washington. Additionally, he is currently an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality K12 scholar in patient-centered outcomes research. Dr Roth's primary research interest is application of comparative effectiveness research methods to inform translation of lung and breast cancer therapeutics and diagnostics, including: observational study design, decision modeling, randomized controlled trial design, systematic review, and meta-analysis. His current research focuses on evaluating patient perspectives on lung cancer screening, and applying value of information analysis to identify high-value study designs for future lung cancer screening research. Dr Roth received his PhD in pharmaceutical outcomes research from the University of Washington. He also holds a MHA degree from the department of health services at the University of Washington.

For the paper, “Methods to Assess Cost-Effectiveness and Value of Further Research When Data Are Sparse: Negative-Pressure Wound Therapy for Severe Pressure Ulcers”, Med Decis Making 2013 33: 415.

Marta O. Soares, is a Researcher in the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York (https://www.york.ac.uk/che/staff/research/marta-soares/). She holds an MSc in Biostatistics awarded by the University of Lisbon in 2008. Marta is currently a member of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Technology Appraisal Committee.
Marta has worked on a variety of applied projects, in clinical areas including wound care, epilepsy and sepsis. She has carried out a range of methods research in areas including expert elicitation, evidence synthesis, decision modeling and value of information analysis. Marta has also been involved in policy-focused methods development including a framework to support decision making in the face of different types of evidential uncertainty and estimation of the NICE cost-effectiveness threshold.