February 6th, Faculty of Public Health announced Atieb Mehrotra, a physician and public health expert, will become the next head of the Department of Health Services, Policy and Practice from July 1.
Mehrotra’s work primarily focuses on digital health. He studies how internet tools such as telemedicine and remote patient monitoring have changed the delivery of health care. At Brown University, Mehrotra will continue his digital health research, where he is currently a professor of health policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School.
“The question I’m trying to answer is: What impact will[digital health]have? Is it improving access to the care that Americans want or need? ? Is it improving quality or making it worse? What is the impact on spending?” Mehrotra said in an interview with the Herald.?
Recently, Mehrotra’s research has focused on remote patient monitoring. “This is a fundamentally different way of managing patients,” he says. Instead of waiting for a patient to contact you with a problem, remote patient monitoring allows doctors to virtually monitor their patients and contact them if they think something is wrong.
“I think it’s very interesting that the use of these kinds of models is really mushrooming,” he added. “We are seeing some improvements in care.”
“Dr. Mehrotra’s work has had a profound impact on shaping thinking about innovative models of care delivery,” SPH Dean Ashish Jha said in the announcement. “He will assess the impact of telemedicine on cost and quality, how the rise of urgent care has reshaped the healthcare landscape, and other important issues related to consumerism, price transparency, and benefit design. He has led original research.”
Terry Fox Wettle, professor emeritus of health services, policy, and practice and a member of the committee he chairs, said in an email to the Herald that Mehrotra’s research is “a collaboration between medical school faculty and “We offer the possibility of cooperation.” And throughout the university. ”
“One of the great things about this department and this school is that it’s really growing in size,” he said. “There’s been a real uptick in interest in public health, both at the undergraduate level and as a graduate student, mainly because of the pandemic. So it’s really inspiring to see so many people interested in learning more in this field.” That’s the point.”
Wettle said Mehrotra’s knowledge and excitement about SPH stood out to her. “He is well-informed about the department’s priorities and resources and has provided a compelling vision for the department’s future direction and growth,” she said.
Mr. Mehrotra has supported undergraduate and master’s students at Harvard University. “That’s one of the things I really enjoy about my current position,” he said. “And as department head, I intend to continue that, but on a broader scale.”
Mehrotra also currently works as a hospitalist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. This experience, like other medical professionals, sparked his interest in public health.
As chair, Mehrotra hopes to translate the research done at SPH into policy that has real-world impact. “Publishing a paper in a journal is all well and good, but if it doesn’t change the way Americans receive health care or the policies that regulate that health care, it’s obviously not very helpful,” he says.
Mehrotra said that to achieve this, department members need to be encouraged to talk to local and national legislators to explain the implications of their research and how it could change policy. He explained that there is.
“It means we are actually turning our efforts into real change,” he added. “It’s not easy, and the policies are very tricky, but anything I can do to support our faculty in that quest, I’m really excited.”
Cate Latimer is a senior staff writer covering faculty and higher education. She is from Portland, Oregon and is studying English and Urban Studies. In her free time, she can be found playing Frisbee or rewatching episodes of Parks and Rec.
