Health Policy Research Seminar: Jamie Daw, PhD, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management, Columbia University

"The Postpartum Assessment of Health Survey: Generating Data to Inform Policies to Improve Maternal Health."

The United States has a higher maternal mortality rate than comparable peer countries and wide disparities by race, geography, and insurance status. More than two-thirds of pregnancy-related deaths occur in the postpartum year, yet this critical period has long been overlooked in clinical and policy efforts to improve maternal health. Dr. Daw will provide an overview of a multi-state primary data collection effort she leads—the Postpartum Assessment of Health Survey (PAHS)—which aims to fill a longstanding gap in evidence on health status, health care use, and social determinants of health in the year following childbirth. She will discuss the project’s motivation, methodology, key findings, policy impact, and lessons learned.

Dr. Daw is a health services and policy researcher whose work focuses on improving maternal and infant health through evidence-based health care policy and health system interventions. She specializes in quantitative methods, including quasi-experimental designs and the analysis of large survey and administrative datasets. Her current projects, funded by the NIH and AHRQ, examine the effects of Medicaid policy changes and innovative care delivery models on health care access, patient experiences, and health outcomes in the year following childbirth. She also leads the Postpartum Assessment of Health Survey (PAHS), a first-of-its-kind, multi-state representative survey of maternal health in the year after birth. Her research has been cited in policy documents, published in leading journals, and featured in national and international media outlets. Dr. Daw holds a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University, an MSc from the University of British Columbia, and a BHSc from McMaster University.