Health

Rene Almeling

Professor of Sociology

Rene Almeling is a professor of sociology at Yale University with research and teaching interests in gender and medicine. Using a range of qualitative, historical, and quantitative methods, she examines questions about how biological bodies and cultural norms interact to influence scientific knowledge, medical markets, and individual experiences. She is the author of Sex Cells, an award-winning book that offers an inside look at the American market for egg donors and sperm donors.

Susan Busch

Professor of Public Health (Health Policy)

Professor Busch is a Professor of Public Health (Health Policy) and former chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Yale School of Public Health. Professor Busch’s research examines the effects of policies and regulations on health care cost and quality. Most of her work focuses on behavioral health. Professor Busch’s work has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, an S.M.

Sarwat Chaudhry

Professor of Medicine (General Medicine); Associate Dean for Student Research, Office of Education; Co-Director, National Clinician Scholars Program

Sarwat Chaudhry, MD is a board-certified internist who completed her clinical training at the University of Chicago. She came to Yale for the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, and now holds a faculty position as Professor of Medicine in the Section of General Medicine. Her work focuses on improving the care and outcomes of hospitalized patients, with a focus on older patients hospitalized for cardiovascular disease. Dr. Chaudhry serves as Associate Dean of Student Research and is Co-Director of the National Clinician Scholars Program at Yale.

Nicholas Christakis

Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science, Internal Medicine & Biomedical Engineering

Dr. Nicholas Christakis is Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science, Internal Medicine & Biomedical Engineering, and he conducts research on social factors that affect health, health care, and longevity. Dr. Christakis was recently recruited to Yale from Harvard, where he is the Director of the Human Nature Lab and the Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. His current work involves the application of network science and mathematical models to understand the dynamics of health in longitudinally evolving networks.

Ted Cohen

Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases)

Dr. Cohen is an infectious disease epidemiologist whose primary research focus is tuberculosis. He is particularly interested in understanding how TB drug-resistance and medical comorbidities such as HIV frustrate current efforts to control epidemics, with an ultimate goal of developing more effective approaches to limit the morbidity caused by this pathogen. Dr. Cohen’s training is in epidemiology and clinical medicine, and his work includes mathematical modeling, fieldwork, and analysis of programmatic data.

Zack Cooper

Associate Professor of Public Health and Economics

Zack Cooper is an Associate Professor of Public Health and Associate Professor of Economics at Yale University. He also serves as Director of Health Policy at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Professor Cooper is a health economist whose work is focused on producing data-driven scholarship that can inform public policy.

Nihar Desai

Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Nihar R. Desai, MD, MPH is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Vice Chief of the Section of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, an Investigator at the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, and Executive Director for Bundled Payments and Clinical Service Line Operations at the Yale New Haven Health System.

Howard Forman

Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging; Professor of Economics, Management, and Public Health (Health Policy)

Howie Forman is a Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Public Health (Health Policy), Management, and Economics at Yale University. He came to Yale as a practicing diagnostic radiologist and remains an active clinician in the YNHH Emergency Room, where he also functions as the deputy operational chief for Radiology. Since 1998, he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on healthcare policy, economics, finance, and leadership.

Abigail Friedman

Associate Professor of Public Health (Health Policy)

Abigail S. Friedman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Yale School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the policy determinants of tobacco use and disparities therein, with the overarching goal of informing and facilitating evidence-based policymaking to improve population health and reduce inequality. A health economist by training, she conducts work in three areas.

Alan Gerber

Sterling Professor of Political Science

Alan Gerber is Sterling Professor of Political Science, director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and professor of economics and of and statistics and data science at Yale University. He also has affiliations in the Yale School of Public Health and the Jackson School of Global Affairs. Previously he was appointed the Faculty of Arts and Sciences divisional director for the social sciences and became the inaugural FAS dean of social science, serving in this role from 2014 to 2021.