PhD Candidate & Research Scientist
Ab · hi · shek Bha · ti · a
I am currently a PhD candidate at the Carolina Health Informatics Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Research Scientist at CrisisReady, a joint initiative between Harvard University and Direct Relief.
My research broadly focuses on two primary areas:
Health Informatics: Combining disparate data sources to estimate the effects of environmental exposures on individual-level health. To do this, I apply computational methods in statistical learning, causal inference, and spatio-temporal analysis to large-scale clinical, demographic, and geographic data.
Public Health: Combining large-scale field survey data, syndromic surveillance data, and novel mobility data streams for equitable humanitarian crisis response, namely in the context of the War in Syria, the 2018 Floods in India, and the Rohingya Refugee Crisis in Bangladesh.
Prior to this, I spent several years at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights and at the Mittal Institute at Harvard University. I received an MS from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Global Health and Population department, and undergraduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.
This site serves as a repository for my professional work and personal projects that I pursue in my spare time.
For contact, please use: abhatia [at] unc [dot] edu
Examining whether prenatal lead exposure increases preterm birth risk, and whether micronutrient adequacy and community-level social vulnerability modify that association, using data from the ECHO Data Warehouse.
Comparing the predictive contribution of patient-reported social determinants captured in EHRs against Census-linked socioeconomic measures for glycemic control in a UNC Health type 2 diabetes cohort.
Electronic health records contain longitudinal patient address histories, a largely untapped, population-scale data source for studying residential mobility and spatial health inequity.
An interactive dashboard mapping my collaboration network, publications, and research themes.
I'm always interested in connecting with researchers, practitioners, and organizations working on crisis response, health informatics, or data for social good. Whether you have a question about my work, a potential collaboration, or just want to say hello, I'd love to hear from you.
