Research Team

Director

Seoyoung C Kim, M.D., Sc.D.

Seoyoung C. Kim, M.D, Sc.D., M.S.C.E, is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Program in Rheumatologic, Immunologic, and Musculoskeletal Pharmacoepidemiology in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is board-certified in Rheumatology, and co-appointed in the Division of Rheumatology, Inflammation, and Immunity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In addition, she is Instructor in Epidemiology and co-directs EPI 253: Effectiveness Research with Longitudinal Healthcare Databases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research focuses on comparative safety and effectiveness of medications for the rheumatic diseases as well as health services/outcome research in Rheumatology. She is an Associate Editor for Arthritis Care and Research and ACR Open Rheumatology. Dr. Kim graduated from the College of Medicine at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea and completed residency training in Internal Medicine at State University of New York at Buffalo. She finished her fellowship training in rheumatology at the University of Pennsylvania and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She received a master’s degree in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania and a doctoral degree in Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
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Faculty Members

Rishi J Desai M.S., Ph.D.

Rishi J Desai, MS, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Epidemiologist in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His research focuses on generating high-quality evidence for comparative safety and effectiveness of drug treatments for chronic diseases, especially in patient populations typically underrepresented in clinical trials, including pregnant women, the elderly, and patients with multiple chronic conditions. His research projects have mainly concentrated on rheumatology and cardiology; where he has extensively used observational study designs as well as systematic reviews to answer clinically important research questions related to drug effects on a variety of health outcomes. He also has a special interest in applied methodological research aimed at improving confounding control in observational studies.
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Daniel H. Solomon M.D., M.P.H.

Daniel Solomon, MD, MPH, is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Section of Clinical Sciences in Rheumatology and is co-appointed in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics. The focus of his research is health services research, quality of care, and pharmacoepidemiology as it pertains to rheumatic diseases and osteoporosis. Specific topics of interest include: indicators of quality prescribing, patterns of medication use for osteoporosis, quality improvement in osteoporosis care, and cardiovascular disease in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. Solomon is Chair of the Quality of Care Committee of the American College of Rheumatology and was awarded the Henry Kunkel Young Investigator Award from the ACR in 2007. He attended Yale College, Yale School of Medicine, and Harvard School of Public Health. His residency and fellowship training in rheumatology were completed at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. As well, his clinical practice is at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
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Mehdi Najafzadeh, Ph.D., M.Sc., M.A.

Mehdi Najafzadeh PhD, MSc, MA, is an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an associate statistician/epidemiologist in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Phamacoeconomics at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is interested in methods for bridging the gap between randomized and non-randomized data sources used in medical research and currently leads a project for linking randomized clinical trials and claims data for improving methods for evidence generation. His research also involves developing methods for quantitative benefit risk analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and economic evaluation. He has experience in modeling and simulation (discrete event simulation, systems dynamic, Markov models), preference elicitation techniques (discrete choice and best-worst scaling experiments), health-related quality of life measures, and statistical analysis and programming.
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Candace Feldman, M.D., M.P.H., Sc.D.

Candace Feldman, MD, MPH, ScD is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in the Division of Rheumatology, Inflammation and Immunity. She received her MD from the Yale School of Medicine, her MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and her ScD in Social and Behavioral Sciences from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She completed both her residency and fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Clinically, she is a practicing rheumatologist with a specific focus on the care of patients with lupus as well as patients with complex medical and social needs. Her NIH-funded research focuses on racial, ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities in rheumatic diseases and intervention design to reduce disparities in avoidable outcomes.
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