Bernie J. O'Brien New Investigator Award

Zirui Song, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor of healthcare policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. A physician and health economist, Dr Song’s work focuses on strategies to improve the value of healthcare spending. This includes evaluations of spending and quality under alternative payment models, the impact of Medicare and private insurer prices on provider behavior, the economics of Medicare Advantage, and the effect of workplace wellness programs. Dr Song is a recipient of research awards from AcademyHealth, the Society of General Internal Medicine, and the American College of Physicians, and teaching awards from Harvard University. He has worked on Medicare policy in the US Department of Health and Human Services, was a Visiting Fellow at the Health Policy Commission for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and served on the Task Force on Health Care Reform for the Massachusetts Medical Society. Dr Song received his MD from Harvard Medical School, magna cum laude, and PhD in Health Policy (Economics) from Harvard University. He completed his residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Sherri Rose, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School, where her work is centered on developing and integrating innovative statistical approaches to advance human health. Broadly, Dr. Rose's methodological research focus is nonparametric machine learning for causal inference and prediction. Within health policy, Dr. Rose works on risk adjustment, comparative effectiveness research, and health program impact evaluation. She also co-leads the Health Policy Data Science Lab at Harvard where she directs projects in computational health economics and clinical informatics. Dr. Rose coauthored the first book on machine learning for causal inference, and her recent honors include an NIH Director's New Innovator Award to develop robust estimators for generalizability. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, Slate, and The Boston Globe. Dr. Rose received her PhD in Biostatistics from UC Berkeley before completing an NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.

James D. Chambers, PhD, MPharm, MSc, is an investigator at the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health, Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, Tufts Medical Center, and an assistant professor of medicine at Tufts University in Boston, MA. James received his MPharm degree from Queens University in Belfast and previously worked as a pharmacist in the UK and Ireland. He also obtained an MSc from the University of York and PhD from Brunel University. James' research interests include examining the factors that influence coverage policy for medical technology, pharmaceutical innovation, and the use and potential value of cost-effectiveness analysis in the US health care system.

Dr. Newall is an Associate Professor in Health Economics at The School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW Australia. He is also an Honorary Fellow at the Australian National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance. He completed his MPH (Hons) and PhD at the University of Sydney on the cost-effectiveness of vaccination programs.

His main research area is the economic evaluation of infectious disease prevention strategies, as well as the statistical and epidemiological analyses that inform these evaluations. He has over 40 peer-reviewed publications on a range of vaccine preventable diseases, including the epidemiology and cost-effectiveness of prevention strategies for influenza (seasonal and pandemic), pneumococcal disease, rotavirus, and human papillomavirus.

He has been appointed to the World Health Organization Roster of Experts in the area of Health Economics and has been a visiting scholar at the National Institutes of Health. He has received several awards for his research and public health impact, including the prestigious Aileen Plant Memorial Prize and the Dean's Rising Star Award from the Faculty of Medicine, UNSW.

Dr. Jena is an Assistant Professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School and an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Jena is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Jena's research involves several areas of health economics and policy including the economics of medical innovation and cost-effectiveness, the economics of physician behavior, medical malpractice, and productivity in health care. Dr. Jena graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his MD and PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a recipient of the 2007 Eugene Garfield award from Research America for the best paper on the economic impact of medical technology. In 2013, he was the recipient of the NIH Director's Early Independence Award, a 5-year award given to 10-15 junior scientists nationally who show exceptional promise to conduct cross-cutting biomedical and behavioral science research.

Dr. Carlson is an Assistant Professor in the Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy Program at the University of Washington and an affiliate faculty member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.  He graduated with his PhD from the Institute for Public Health Genetics in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Washington in 2007 and conducted his postdoctoral training in pharmacoeconomics at the University of Washington from 2007-2009. Dr. Carlson's current research interests and work to date has primarily focused on the intersection of three areas: 1) genomics and emerging technologies in the field of personalized medicine, 2) uncertainty both in our decision-making processes and as the concept applies to the application of medical technologies in "real world" settings (i.e. outside of clinical trials) including comparative effectiveness research, and 3) economic and policy options to address these uncertainties as we seek to improve our healthcare system and the health of our population.