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 Schuler 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 MS, Collins RL, "Early alcohol and smoking initiation: A contributor to sexual minority disparities in adult use," American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2019 (forthcoming)

Schuler MS, Dick AW, Stein BD, "Sexual minority disparities in opioid misuse, perceived heroin risk and heroin access among a national sample of US adults," Drug & Alcohol Dependence, 201, 2019

Schuler MS, Stein BD, Collins RL, "Differences in substance use disparities across age groups in a national cross-sectional survey of lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults," LGBT Health, 6(2), 2019

Rose AJ, McBain R, Schuler MS, LaRochelle MR, Ganz DA, Kilambi V, Stein BD, Bernson D, Chui KK, Land T, Walley AY, Stopka TJ, "Impact of age on opioid prescribing, overdose, and mortality in Massachusetts, 2011 to 2015," Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 67(1), 2019

Schuler MS, Tucker JS, Pedersen ER, D’Amico EJ, "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

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

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

Publications