Leadership
Director, Pathways Program
Dr. Amber Barnato, MD, MPH, MS, is the Director of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (TDI). Since taking on the role of TDI Director in 2021, she has committed to deepen its focus on equity in healthcare delivery and advancing an organizational culture that values diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
Dr. Barnato is a physician health services researcher with dual clinical training in preventive medicine and public health and in hospice and palliative medicine. Her work has focused both on refining measures of hospital end-of-life treatment intensity and exploring the mechanisms underlying variations in these measures. More recently she has begun developing interventions to modify patient and provider behavior related to end-of-life decision-making with the goal of better aligning patient values with medical decisions and reducing the burden of surrogate decision making.
Director, DocPath and Predoctoral Programs
Dr. Alka Dev, DrPH, MHS, is a public health demographer and assistant professor of TDI. Dr. Dev’s recent research focuses on maternal health equity in the United States and abroad, especially the harmful effects of resource uncertainty or scarcity during pregnancy and its impact on health outcomes for both mothers and newborns.
Following her passion for health equity, Dr. Dev worked for more than 20 years as a global health professional, serving the healthcare needs of some of the poorest people in the world. Between 2016-2019, she led the establishment of a neonatal ward at a large public hospital in southern Haiti, focusing on improving survival for sick newborns.
Prior to joining TDI, she worked for several years at Geisel, serving as a course director and teaching several equity-focused courses to MD and MPH students. She was also the social justice curriculum advisor at The Dartmouth Institute and co-chaired Geisel’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.
Director, Faculty Program
Dr. Erika Moen, PhD, MS, is an assistant professor of TDI and biomedical data science. Her research lab uses state-of-the-art biomedical informatics and data science methods to study variation in cancer care delivery and patient outcomes. (Read more about the Moen lab here.) Her specific interests include evaluating dynamic national patient-sharing networks to examine variation in cancer care care coordination and diffusion of novel cancer tests and treatments. Dr. Moen’s ultimate research goal is to optimize cancer patient outcomes by streamlining high-quality care.
Director, Undergraduate Program
Dr. Inas Khayal, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at TDI and Biomedical Data Science and Adjunct Assistant Professor in Computer Science. She leads the Sustainable Health Lab focused on improving chronic care delivery using model-based systems engineering and data science to address health services research problems of implementation, quality measurement, improvement and equity. Her current work addresses the reality of the multi-level interconnected systems we live in. As an interdisciplinary scientist, Dr. Khayal combines problem-solving skills with technical skills to develop the most appropriate technical and organizational solutions. (Read more about the Sustainable Health Lab here.)
Dr. Khayal has extensive experience mentoring and teaching undergraduate and graduate students across Dartmouth’s Arts & Sciences, Thayer School of Engineering, Tuck School of Business, and Geisel School of Medicine. She describes her approach to mentorship in the following way: “My role as a mentor is typically formally described through research or educational engagements, but my mentorship style extends into truly engaging with students to understand their personal and professional aspirations and to guide them through their academic journeys.”
Research and Operations
Associate Program Director
Deanna Chyn, MPH, provides program support and oversight for the Pathways. She has extensive experience shepherding national administrative claims-based research projects, applying for grants and mentoring the irreplaceable junior analysts and programmers that are the heart of any successful research team. With over 10 years of experience as a Medicare claims analyst, Deanna is happy to provide experience-based insights into researchers’ data questions.
Research Programmer Analyst
Dr. Chris Leggett, PhD, provides analytic and programming support for the faculty and predoctoral fellowships. Chris was originally trained as an economist, and he was a private sector consultant prior to joining Dartmouth in 2020. Since his arrival, Chris has provided programming and analysis support (using medical claims data) to a variety of Dartmouth College faculty and Dartmouth Health physicians, in addition to providing infrastructure programming support to the Data Analytic Core. He programs primarily in SAS, Stata and R. Chris has worked extensively with Medicare claims data, and he has supplemental experience with all-payer claims data and department of defense TRICARE claims data.
Research Administration Manager
Christian Spalding, MPH, leads the grants and finance team at TDI. He has eight years’ experience working in higher education and sponsored research and serves as the primary contact for questions directed to the TDI Operations team and Geisel administrative offices.
Senior Research Administration
Vanessa Moy has been a Senior Sponsored Grants Administrator at TDI for more than 10 years. She has a wealth of pre- and post-award experience and manages the Health Equity Pathways budgets.