Rita Hamad, MD, PhD, is the director of the SPHERE Center. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Hamad spearheads a research agenda to examine the effects of social and economic policies on health disparities across the life course, with the goal of informing state and national policymaking. She specializes in applying quasi-experimental epidemiologic…
Abdinasir Ali, PhD, MPH, is a Yerby postdoctoral research fellow based at the SPHERE Center. He received his PhD in Health Services and Policy with a focus on health economics from the University of Iowa in 2024. Dr. Ali is a health economist and health services researcher. His work involves using quasi-experimental designs and statistical and econometric methods applied to administrative data and surveys. His research is focused on understanding…
Akansha Batra, PhD, MA, is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utah. She has been involved with the SPHERE Center as a Research Data Analyst and then as a PhD student since 2017. Akansha holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from UCSF, a Master’s in Health Policy and Management from UCLA, and a Master’s in Economics from the University of Delhi. She is passionate about exploring the underlying…
Claire D. Brindis, DrPH, is a member of the SPHERE Center’s Advisory Board. She is a Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Health Policy and Emerita Director of the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California San Francisco. As a Latina bi-lingual, bi-cultural researcher, her research experience is in program evaluation and implementation science, as well as policy research on how social determinants impact health.…
Daniel Collin, MPH, has worked as a Research Data Analyst at the SPHERE Center since completing his MPH in Epidemiology/Biostatistics from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health in 2018. He is currently working on examining how the earned income tax credit and other economic policies affect health and health behaviors. Future projects include looking at how school and housing policies affect health outcomes among children and adults. In his…
Daniel E. Dawes, JD, is a member of the SPHERE Center’s Advisory Board. He serves as Senior Vice President of Global Health and Founding Dean of the School of Global Health at Meharry Medical College. Prior to this, he served as Executive Director of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute and a Professor of health law, policy, and management at Morehouse School of Medicine. He is the author of two groundbreaking health policy books, 150 Years of…
Emily C. Dore, PhD, MPH, MSW, is a postdoctoral research fellow at the SPHERE Center. She received her PhD in Sociology from Emory University and a dual MPH/MSW degree from Boston University. Her research examines macro-level determinants of health with a goal of informing policies that decrease health inequities. Her work has so far evaluated the long-term health impacts of economic policy exposure in childhood, as well as the role…
Dave Esons (eh-sunz) is a new faculty support staff member in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and provides administrative support to the SPHERE Center. On hiatus for now, Dave plans to pursue his master’s in public health and apply that towards confronting housing instability and poverty. He is enthusiastic about how epidemiological and biostatistical data can be used to influence policy and improve population health. He would also…
Talia Ford, a rising junior at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, is currently interning as a research scholar in the Du Bois Scholars Program at Harvard College. Talia is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for all individuals, particularly those from underrepresented communities. Her primary focus is on addressing the health disparities that disproportionately affect these groups, with a specific interest in maternal and child health. At the SPHERE…
Else Foverskov, PhD is an Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the SPHERE Center. She continues to work with the Center to examine the effects of neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics on health among a group of refugees in Denmark who were quasi-randomly assigned to neighborhoods of varying socioeconomic disadvantage upon arrival. Her broader research evaluates how social policies can help reduce health disparities.…