Musculoskeletal Team
Divya is a doctoral candidate in the Clinical and Population Health Research Department. Prior to her doctoral training, Divya earned her Bachelor’s degree in Medicine from M S Ramaiah Medical College, India and Master's degree in Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore. She then worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Maryland in the Pharmaceutical Health Services Research Department, during which she was primarily involved in comparative effectiveness research and patient centered outcomes research studies conducted in both academic and industry settings. Her research interest is in pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacoeconomics including developing methods to optimize use of therapeutics, cost-effectiveness of prescription drugs and medical devices, as well as the development and evaluation of policies to improve their use. Divya is mentored by Shao-Hsien Liu, PhD.
Dr. Lapane’s primary research interests fall under the umbrella of quality of care medication issues among older adults living in nursing homes. She has performed drug utilization studies, often evaluating the contextual, organizational, policy impacts on patterns of prescription drug use among nursing home residents. Dr. Lapane has also conducted a series of non-experimental comparative effectiveness research studies of medications in populations systematically excluded from clinical trials. She has used large administrative claims databases to estimate the risks associated with appropriate medication use and the beneficial effects of medications. Dr. Lapane has conducted large scale intervention trials to improve medication related issues in marginalized populations. Dr. Lapane’s methodological work has focused on the robustness of techniques and the appropriate application of techniques often used in non-experimental comparative effectiveness research.
Dr. Lapane leads the PHARE Study Group and is Associate Dean and Director of the Doctoral Program in Clinical and Population Health Research. She is a Professor in the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences in the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the UMass Chan Medical School.
Sara Khan is a Research Assistant in the Clinical and Population Health Research Department. She graduated from The College of the Holy Cross with a double major in biology and sociology. Her research includes conducting an Honors Sociology Thesis using qualitative methodology on the burden of disease of Axial Spondyloarthritis on health-related quality of life. Sara assists the team with data collection and analysis.