Laura Faherty (she/her) is a physician policy researcher at RAND, professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, and attending physician at Maine Medical Center. Prior to joining RAND, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.
A board-certified general pediatrician with a public health and health services research background, Dr. Faherty’s research focuses on maternal-child health and pandemic preparedness and response, both in U.S. and non-U.S. settings. Her current work addresses COVID-19 testing in K–12 schools; equitable COVID-19 vaccine delivery; behavioral health in the perinatal period, including opioid use in pregnancy and perinatal depression; and behavioral health surveillance in the disaster context. She recently supported the development of the 2020 Vaccines National Strategic Plan and evaluated the impact of The Rockefeller Foundation's Equity-First COVID-19 Vaccination Initiative. She completed her residency and chief residency in pediatrics at Boston Medical Center and Boston Children's Hospital. Dr. Faherty received her M.D. and M.P.H. in global epidemiology from Emory University, her M.S. in health policy research from the University of Pennsylvania, and her B.A. in history of science from Princeton University.
Selected Publications
Stephen W. Patrick, Laura J. Faherty, Andrew Dick, Theresa A. Scott, Judith Dudley, Bradley D. Stein., "Association Among County-Level Economic Factors, Clinician Supply, Metropolitan or Rural Location, and Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome," Journal of the American Medical Association, 321(4), 2019
Laura J. Faherty, Heather L Schwartz, Faruque Ahmed, Yenlik Zheteyeva; Lori Uscher-Pines, "School and preparedness officials' perspectives on social distancing practices to reduce influenza transmission during a pandemic: Considerations to guide future work," Preventive Medicine Reports, 2019 (forthcoming)
Faherty, LJ; Hantsoo, L; Appleby, D; Sammel, M; Bennett, I; Wiebe, DJ., "Movement Patterns in Women at Risk for Perinatal Depression: Use of a Mood-Monitoring Mobile Application in Pregnancy. ," Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association., 24(4), 2017
Faherty, LJ, Rasmussen, SA, and Lurie, N, "A Call for Science Preparedness for Pregnant Women in Public Health Emergencies," American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2016
Faherty, LJ, Rasmussen, SA, and Lurie, N, "Planning for Research on Children During Public Health Emergencies," Pediatrics, 137(2), 2016
Faherty, L.J., Matone, M., Passarella, M., Lorch S., "Mental Health of Mothers of Infants with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome and Prenatal Opioid Exposure ," Maternal and Child Health Journal, 2018 (forthcoming)
Laura J. Faherty, Benjamin French, Alexander Fiks, "Gender of the Clinician, Child, and Guardian and the Association with Receipt of Routine Adolescent Vaccines," Journal of Adolescent Health, 59(1), 2016
Faherty LJ, Kranz AM, Russell-Fritch J, Patrick SW, Cantor J, Stein BD., "Association of Punitive and Reporting State Policies Related to Substance Use in Pregnancy With Rates of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome," JAMA Network Open, 2(11), 2019