Senior Physician Policy Researcher; Professor of Policy Analysis (Affiliate), the RAND School of Public Policy
She/Her
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Laura Faherty is a senior physician policy researcher at RAND, associate professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine, 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, practicing 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, in both U.S. and non-U.S. settings. Her current work focuses on building trust in public health through social media; early warning systems for potential pandemics such as wastewater surveillance; the impact of school-associated vaccination on inequities in vaccination rates; and policies related to perinatal behavioral health, including perinatal mood/anxiety disorders and substance use disorders. She recently published a toolkit funded by CDC on conducting behavioral health surveillance in the disaster context, supported the development of the 2020 Vaccines National Strategic Plan, contributed to The Rockefeller Foundation's national playbook for COVID-19 testing in K–12 schools, and evaluated the impact of The Rockefeller Foundation's Equity-First COVID-19 Vaccination Initiative. Her current research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Dr. Faherty completed her residency and chief residency in pediatrics at Boston Medical Center and Boston Children's Hospital. She 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.
M.D., Emory University School of Medicine; M.P.H. in global epidemiology, Emory University Rollins School of Public Health; M.S.H.P. in health policy research, University of Pennsylvania; B.A. in history of science, Princeton University
