Megan S. Schuler

Photo of Megan Schuler
Associate Policy Researcher
Boston Office

Education

Ph.D. in psychiatric epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; M.S. in biostatistics, Medical University of South Carolina; B.S. in mathematics, Tulane University

Overview

Megan Shuler is an associate policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. The primary focus of her research is examining heterogeneity in substance use and mental health behaviors, disorders and treatment, both within populations and across the life course. Specifically, she has used latent variable modeling to identify distinct subgroups of individuals characterized by similar symptoms or treatment use patterns. Additionally, she has examined how associations between substance use and risk factors vary dynamically across age using time-varying effect modeling. Currently she is examining heterogeneity in substance use disparities among sexual minorities. Methodologically, her research focuses on estimation of causal effects in the analysis of observational health data. As an affiliate of RAND's Opioid Policy Tools and Information Center (OPTIC), she is developing causal inference methods for evaluating concurrent and time-varying opioid policies. Prior to RAND, Schuler was a research fellow at Harvard's Health Care Policy Department and a postdoc at Penn State's Methodology Center. She received her Ph.D. in psychiatric epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, an M.S. in biostatistics from the Medical University of South Carolina, and a B.S. in mathematics from Tulane University.

Research Focus

Selected Publications

Schuler, M. S., Stein, B. D., & Collins, R. L., "Differences in substance use disparities across age groups in a national cross-sectional survey of lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults," LGBT Health, 2019 (forthcoming)

Schuler, MS, Rice, CE, Evans-Polce, RJ, & Collins, RL , "Disparities in substance use behaviors and disorders among adult sexual minorities by age, gender, and sexual identity," Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 189, 2018

Schuler MS, Rose S, "Targeted maximum likelihood estimation for causal inference in observational studies," American Journal of Epidemiology, 185(1), 2017

Joyce, NR, Schuler, MS, Hadland, S, & Hatfield, LA., "Variation in the 12-month treatment trajectories of children and adolescents after a diagnosis of depression," JAMA Pediatrics, 172(1), 2018

Schuler, M. S., Tucker, J. S., Pedersen, E. R., & D’Amico, E. J. , "Relative influence of perceived peer and family substance use on adolescent alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use in middle and high school," Addictive Behaviors, 88, 2019

Evans-Polce, RJ, Schuler, MS, Schulenberg, JE, & Patrick, ME. , "Gender- and age-varying associations of sensation seeking and substance use across young adulthood," Addictive Behaviors, 84, 2018

Rose, A. J., McBain, R., Schuler, M. S., LaRochelle, M. R., Ganz, D. A., Kilambi, V., Stein, B. D., Bernson, D., Chui, K. K., Land, T., Walley, A. Y., & Stopka, T. J., "Impact of age on opioid prescribing, overdose, and mortality in Massachusetts, 2011 to 2015," Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 67(1), 2019

Hariri S, Schuler MS, Naleway AL, Daley MF, Weinmann S, Crane B, Newcomer SR, Tolsma D, & Markowitz LE, "Human papillomavirus vaccine dose effectiveness against incident genital warts in a cohort of insured US females," American Journal of Epidemiology, 187(2), 2018

Publications