Bio and CV

 

I grew up in New Jersey and studied Music History and Music Theory as an undergraduate. Following college, I spent a year in Jerusalem studying at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. I attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 2001. From 2001-2004, I trained in Internal Medicine at the Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, NY. From 2004-2005, I served as a chief resident in Internal Medicine, a position that involved teaching trainees principles of evidence-based medicine. From 2005-2008, at Boston University, I simultaneously completed a residency in Preventive Medicine and a fellowship in Health Services Research, and completed an MSc degree in Health Services Research.

 

From 2008-2016, I was a physician-researcher at the Bedford VA Medical Center, which is northwest of Boston. There, I served as an investigator at the Center for Healthcare Organization and Implementation Research (CHOIR). I was supported by a five-year career development award from the VA to study and improve the quality of outpatient oral anticoagulation care in the VA system, which treats approximately 9 million veterans across the USA. Over a series of multiple grants and multiple projects, I described the issues with quality of care in this area, explained their causes, developed quality of care measures for such care, and deployed them as part of a regional implementation project. As a result of this project, the VA redesigned how outpatient oral anticoagulation care is delivered nationwide, using the quality measures and best practices that we developed and tested. For this work, I received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest award given to junior scientists in the United States. My VA career grew to encompass much more than just anticoagulation. I led or participated in numerous projects to assess the suboptimal use of medications, including antipsychotics, testosterone, vasodilators, and others.

 

In 2016, I left my VA position and moved to the RAND Corporation as a Physician Policy Researcher. At RAND, I worked on various topics, including quality of life measurement, health promotion among military personnel, dangerous opioid prescribing, and evaluation of large federal quality improvement programs. Among the programs I helped evaluate was the Medicare Million Hearts Model, which paid physicians to reduce patients’ cardiac risk scores over time.

 

In 2019, I moved to Israel with my wife and our four children, and settled in Jerusalem. In July 2020, I was hired by Hebrew University to teach at the School of Public Health.

 

Link to my CV here