My research interests are focused on constructing and analyzing measures of a disease burden. The goals are to optimize healthcare costs, to recommend healthy habits and practices in the disease control and prevention, to improve quality of life, and to mitigate the inequity in distributions of health treatments.
We study the burden of disease in short, medium and life-time terms, and from 2 aspects:
1. Medical and health consequences of disease such as mortality, morbidity, disability-adjusted quality of life, and daily living activities
2. Financial burden of disease including direct medical costs of treatments, disease-related non-medical costs, and individual's productivity loss.
While the first aspect directly measures patients' health deteriorations and risks, the second aspect not only quantifying the serious level of illness by dollar amounts but also reflecting portions of household financial sources for treatments that could possibly become household distress, and result in catastrophic costs, especially in low and middle income households.
Our research employs the real-world data that combines individuals' electronic health/medical records (EHR), insurance claims, individual questionnaire surveys, and macro-environments to identify and estimate the burden of disease.
Ph.D. - Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 2010
