Harvard-wide Pediatric Health Services Research Fellowship Program

Abby is a second year endocrinology fellow at Boston Children's Hospital. She completed her residency in pediatrics in the Boston Combined Residency Program at Boston Children's Hospital and Boston Medical Center. Her research interest is in utilizing health services and epidemiological methods to conduct projects at the interface between endocrinology and environmental health. Her current interests include understanding the mechanism through which lead exposure leads to childhood growth delay and determining whether exposure to fine particulate matter prenatally and during childhood is associated with development of insulin resistance and the metabolic phenotype. In her spare time, Abby enjoys hiking, bicycling, and backpacking.

After completing her pediatric residency and chief residency at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Ashwini is currently completing two concurrent fellowships at Children’s Hospital Boston. She is a clinical fellow at the Harvard Neonatal Perinatal Medicine Program at Children’s Hospital Boston and has assumed the position of Chief Fellow from 2011-2012.  She is also a research fellow in the Harvard Pediatric Health Services Fellowship and expects to earn a Master’s in Public Health with a concentration in Clinical Effectiveness from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research interests and goals have been to address disparities in health care delivery in the field of perinatal-neonatal medicine. Through two main projects, she has looked at maternal stress on birth outcomes and then on quality of life for caregivers of preterm infants. 

Emilie is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is currently a Pediatric Urology Fellow at Boston Children's Hospital. She is a graduate of Emory University (BS, 2001) and The University of Michigan (MD, 2005; Urology Residency 2011). Her research interests include clinical outcomes assessment in pediatric urology, pediatric urinary stone disease, and the use of technology to support treatment/medication compliance in the pediatric urologic population.

As the child of a member of the armed services, Hayden lived in Arizona, Spain, and South Carolina, before his family settled in San Antonio, Texas.  Eager to stay in one state for more than four years, Hayden went to Baylor University for undergraduate studies in Biochemistry and Religion before medical school at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas.  After nearly 15 years in Texas, he went to Palo Alto, California for residency in Pediatrics at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital-Stanford.  Following residency he came to Boston for a year of hospitalist work before starting a fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital Boston.  One of the reasons Hayden chose Children’s for ID fellowship was the opportunity to take advantage of the Health Services Research Fellowship. His research interests include the intersection between infectious diseases and adolescent medicine as well as issues related to college health and chronic diseases.  In his spare time, Hayden enjoys travelling, getting outdoors, and exploring the Boston food scene.     

Kao graduated with honors from Vanderbilt University in 2002 with a B.S. in neuroscience.  He received his M.D. degree at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in 2007.  During medical school, his clinical experiences sparked an interest in the issues of health care costs and the uninsured.  This interest prompted him to pursue a one-year policy fellowship in Washington, D.C. with the nonprofit American Medical Student Association (AMSA).  At AMSA, Kao spearheaded the organization's legislative, educational, and community-based efforts to increase health care access and eliminate health disparities.  In 2010, Kao completed a residency in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston and Boston Medical Center, after which he entered the Harvard Pediatric Health Services Research Fellowship.  As a fellow, he is conducting research on pediatric emergency department utilization and the impact of uninsurance on health outcomes in children.  During his second year of fellowship, Kao will begin the first year of the Harvard Ph.D. program in Health Policy.  He plans to use his training to study health care cost control, health insurance, and pediatric health care utilization.

Kate is a second-year fellow in Urology at Children’s Hospital Boston and in the Harvard Pediatric Health Services Research Fellowship.  She completed medical school at St. Louis University School of Medicine and Urology residency at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio.  Her research interests include quality of life issues in adolescents with spina bifida and outcomes after outpatient ureteral reimplantation.

Kira is a third year fellow in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Boston Children's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.  She is conducting research under the mentorship of Dr. Joanne Wolfe, with a focus on health policy related domains of pediatric oncology and pediatric palliative care.  Current work includes a prospective survey study assessing the economic resource needs of pediatric oncology families during chemotherapy treatment, and a cross-sectional survey study assessing economic resource needs of pediatric stem cell transplant patients during the post-transplant period of home restrictions.  Additional research interests include evaluation of policy barriers to pediatric palliative care.  Kira completed her pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital Boston/Boston Medical Center, and her medical training at Yale University School of Medicine.

Mona is a general pediatrician and second year HSR fellow with an interest in research to enhance pediatric primary care delivery systems focused on chronic disease prevention and risk behavior reduction. She completed her residency at the Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics and medical school at Vanderbilt University in her home town of Nashville, Tennessee. 

Suzette is a general pediatrician and second year health services research fellow, based at the Center for Child and Adolescent Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children.  Suzette received her B.A. and medical degrees from Brown University and a Masters in Public Health from Yale, and completed pediatrics residency training at Duke University Medical Center. Her research interests center on improving mental health outcomes for vulnerable children, and particularly for children involved in the child welfare system. Suzette has completed secondary data analysis of a national longitudinal dataset of children and adolescents in foster care and their caregivers, to determine whether certain supports provided to foster parents are associated with improvements in mental health outcomes observed among youth in foster care. She is also completing a qualitative study examining foster parents' perceived self-efficacy and needs related to managing foster children with emotional and behavioral difficulties, to help inform services provided to foster parents who care for children with mental health issues.