CLINICAL ANALYTICS &
DECISION SCIENCE (CADS) LAB
MEET AFFILIATED FACULTIES
David R. Lairson, PhD
Professor, Management, Policy & Community Health, UTHealth School of Public Health
Director, Center for Health Services Research (CHSR), UTHealth School of Public Health
David R. Lairson, PhD is a health economist and director of the Center for Health Services Research (CHSR) at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, Texas. The major focus of his research is the economic evaluation of preventive services and programs. Dr. Lairson currently serves as the health economist for the School’s CDC funded Prevention Research Center and recently directed the economic evaluation components of National Cancer Institute, Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, and MD Anderson Moonshot funded studies of cancer prevention programs. He is currently working on economic evaluations of the U.S. Veteran Administration’s mental health programs and State of Texas programs to increase access to mental health services among adolescents. His courses cover micro- economics applied to understanding the economics of the healthcare system and methods for the economic evaluation of healthcare and public health investments. He received the University of Texas Regents Outstanding Teacher Award in 2016.
J. Michael Swint, PhD
George McMillan Fleming Professor
Professor, Management, Policy & Community Health, UTHealth School of Public Health
Professor, Center for Clinical Research and Evidence-based Medicine, UT McGovern School of Medicine
Dr. Swint is a Professor of Health Economics at the University of Texas School of Public Health and at
the University of Texas McGovern Medical School. The primary focus of his research is the economic evaluation of public health and healthcare interventions and policies. This includes economic analyses, conducted alongside randomized clinical trials, which document evidence of the cost effectiveness of clinical interventions and follow-up care, in terms of costs relative to both specific health indicators and to patients’ utilities. In addition, he continue to be involved in economic evaluation of interventions designed to prevent illness. Economic analysis is an important component in investigating the impacts of social determinants on population health. HIs interest is in this area include investigation of social determinants of health policies and programs to reduce health disparities and investigation of the inter-relationships between economic activity and population health. He is involved in community-focused economic evaluations of interventions targeting vulnerable populations and have active collaborative research projects with colleagues in several Texas Medical Center Institutions.
Email: jrmontea@bcm.edu
Jane R. Montealegre, PhD MSPH
Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics-Hematology/Oncology,
Deputy Director, Office of Outreach and Health Disparities, Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center,
Assistant Director, Community Outreach and Engagement, Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center,
Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX
Dr. Montealedre is a Behavioral Epidemiologist with research expertise in health disparities and preventive healthcare utilization among racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, and the medically underserved. Much of her work focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of behavioral and health system interventions to address cancer health disparities among the medically underserved. She is the PI of an NIH-funded pragmatic randomized controlled trial to evaluate self-collected human papillomavirus (HPV) testing for cervical cancer screening among under-screened minority women in a safety net health system. She is also co-PI of two large cancer prevention programs to increase cervical and colorectal cancer screening, HPV vaccination, and e-tobacco screening and counseling in our local safety net health system and other community clinics. Administratively, she serve as Deputy Director of the Office of Outreach and Health Disparities of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center (DLDCCC) and Assistant Director of the DLDCCC’s Community Outreach and Engagement (COE) core. Through her work, she is heavily involved in the DLDCCC’s community engagement and outreach initiatives, particularly those focused on disseminating and implementing evidence-based interventions to reduce cancer health disparities.
Ying Lin, PhD
Assistant Professor, Industrial Engineering, University of Houston
Dr Ying Lin is an assistant professor in the Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Houston (UH). She is also the director of Smart Health & Intelligent Engineering Systems (SHINES) lab at UH. Her research lies at the interactions of machine learning, biomedical informatics and quality engineering. She has developed innovative machine learning models for modeling, monitoring and prognosis of complex and heterogeneous systems. She has also developed computational techniques to integrate massive and network-structured datasets in clinical practice and bioinformatics. Her work is published in journal including PLOS One, Mathematical Biosciences, and Scientific Reports. Her research is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the Advanced Manufacturing Institute.
Email: Hadley.Smith@bcm.edu
Hadley Stevens Smith, PhD, MPSA
Postdoctoral Associate
Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy
Baylor College of Medicine
Hadley Stevens Smith, PhD, MPSA is a postdoctoral fellow in Health Policy in the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine. Her research focuses on the health, economic, and policy implications of genetic and genomic testing. As health economist and a scholar in the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genomics, she develops approaches to integrate and advance health economic and ELSI research in genomic medicine. Dr. Smith aims to conduct research that informs policies that promote equitable and efficient implementation of genomic medicine to improve population health. Her methodological interests are in measurement and valuation of both health and non-health outcomes, discrete choice experiments, equity-informed cost-effectiveness analyses, and use of natural experiments to inform clinical policy. Dr. Smith earned a PhD in Health Economics from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health. She has expertise in economic evaluation, health policy analysis, genomics, and ELSI.
Ana Patricia Ortiz, PhD, MPH
Investigator of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences
University of Puerto Rico Comprehensive Cancer Center (UPRCCC)
Professor in Epidemiology
Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
Graduate School of Public Health
The University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus.
Dr. Ana Patricia Ortiz is an investigator of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences of the University of Puerto Rico Comprehensive Cancer Center (UPRCCC) (since 2007) and Ad-Honorem Professor in Epidemiology at the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology of the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus. Dr. Ortiz has over 17 years of experience in cancer prevention and control research, as well as mentoring undergraduate, graduate and professional students within this field. She has authored more than 150 publications in peer-reviewed journals, most of which are within the field of cancer. Her research interests include human papilloma virus (HPV), HPV-related malignancies, HIV, and women’s health. Among several active research projects, she is a researcher at the Puerto Rico site of the NCI funded AIDS Malignancy Consortium (AMC) (2UM1CA121947-14) and of the ANCHOR: Anal Cancer/ HSIL Outcomes Research Study (U01CA121947). Within the AMC, she is the Director of the Career Enhancement Program. Since 2004, she has also been a researcher of The University of Puerto Rico/University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) Partnership for Excellence in Cancer Research Grant (2U54CA096297-17) and is currently Multiple-PI of this grant. In addition, she is an investigator of an R01 focused on implementation of school-entry policies for HPV vaccination in Puerto Rico (1R01CA232743-01A1) and of an R21 evaluating the association of oral microbiota and the inflammasome with oral HPV infection among HIV+ adults (1R21CA264606-01). She is also multiple PI of the CAMPO Consortium, a U54 grant focused on the prevention of HPV-related cancers in HIV+ populations in Latin America and the Caribbean (1U54CA242646-03), as well as Program Director and multiple PI of the CAPAC Research Training Program, an R25 focused on recruiting graduate and professional students to participate in a hands-on mentored research experience in cancer prevention and control (R25 CA240120-03). She is also an Expert Member of the Infections and Vaccination Working Group, within the Latin America and the Caribbean Code Against Cancer, of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and an author of the US Caribbean chapter of the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), U.S. Global Change Program.