Instructors, Facilitators and Participants

Instructors

Shawn Garbett (Vanderbilt University Medical Center)

Shawn Garbett, MS is faculty at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he holds an appointment in the Department of Biostatistics. Mr. Garbett is the director for informatics software development.

Garbett has a diverse career background starting as an engineer for the Tennessee Valley Authority doing load grid optimization and data collection and modeling of the reservoir system. He worked as a consultant for many years, designing high confidence medical and nuclear software systems. He designed the first FDA approved closed loop medical device for Walter Reed with installations in Air Force One.

His research career began when he joined Vanderbilt in 2009. He began working with the department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt in 2016 and has participated in research on two publications which got listed in the top 10 papers in genomics. He has coauthored a book chapter on pharmacogenomics.

John Graves (Vanderbilt University)

John Graves, Ph.D. is Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where he holds appointments in the Department of Health Policy and the Department of Medicine. Dr. Graves directs the Center for Health Economic Modeling at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and is a faculty affiliate of the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH) and the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center.

Graves’ career spans nearly 20 years conducting interdisciplinary research at the intersection of health economics and health care policy. The focus of his work is on the use of econometric and decision analytic methodologies to inform the development, implementation and evaluation of health care reforms at the state and federal level. His research contributions include modeling efforts that informed both the 2006 Massachusetts health reform legislation and the 2010 Affordable Care Act, for which he served as lead modeler for the White House Office of Health Reform.

Since joining Vanderbilt in 2011, Graves has led and published research projects on novel methods for identifying provider shortages, on the returns to hospital spending and quality, and on the value of genetic screening in diverse health system populations. He currently leads two large federally-funded research grants on the health effects of insurance coverage expansion among safety net patients in the South, and on the implications of provider network design for access and competition in health insurance markets.

Graves earned his BA in Economics and English from The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He holds a Ph.D. in Health Policy from Harvard University and is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, the National Institute on Aging, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the American Statistical Association, and the National Academy of Social Insurance. He has taught and consulted for the Master’s in Public Administration in International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, and is an affiliate of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT.

Course Development

Jinyi Zhu (Vanderbilt University)

Jinyi Zhu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy. Her research focuses on applications and methods to inform decision-making for resource allocation in public health and health care. Specifically, her research falls into three main areas: 1) resource prioritization for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease, 2) applied model-based cost-effectiveness analysis in other clinical areas including TB and HIV, and 3) methodological advances in disease simulation modeling (e.g., model calibration and validation).

Dr. Zhu received a Ph.D. in Health Policy from Harvard University. She also holds an MPH from Yale University and a BS in Biology and BA in economics from Peking University.

Hanxuan Yu (Vanderbilt University Medical Center)

Hanxuan (Astrid) Yu is a Health Policy Data Analyst in the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University. Working with Dr. Ashley Leech, Prof. John Graves, and Dr. Jinyi Zhu, she applies a range of analytical methods, including discrete event simulation, microsimulation, and Markov model, to address practical questions and support decision-making in the public health field. She also focuses on methodological advances to enhance the accuracy, speed and quality of decision analysis. Her ongoing projects include: 1) applying model-based cost-effectiveness analysis in the healthcare for pregnant women with opioid use disorder and global health questions like childhood epilepsy patients in Nigeria, 2) evaluating the clinical value and application method of polygenic risk scores for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease based on cost-effectiveness techniques, 3) developing methodology implementations like common random numbers in specific disease simulation models.

Ashley Leech (Vanderbilt University)

Ashley Leech is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. Leech’s research combines health services research and health economic methods to answer questions related to healthcare access, delivery, resource allocation, and use, and outcomes for reproductive-age women and their children. She is the Principal Investigator of an NIH/NIDA-funded career development award on Advancing Treatment Outcomes for Pregnant Women with Opioid Use Disorder where she is using decision science methodology to promote the coverage and adoption of high-value healthcare for pregnant women with opioid use disorder, a population that disproportionately faces major impediments to care.

Dr. Leech completed her post-doctoral training in Health Economics at the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health (CEVR) at Tufts University School of Medicine where she focused on decision science methodology and received her Ph.D. in Health Services Research at Boston University School of Public Health.