Elizabeth Stuart Appointed as New Bloomberg Professor of American Health

Elizabeth A. Stuart, PhD, a national expert in biostatistics and policy evaluation, has been appointed as a Bloomberg Professor of American Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This endowed position will provide dedicated support for her work through the Bloomberg American Health Initiative in multiple fields, including addiction, violence, adolescent health, and education.

Stuart is Associate Dean for Education and professor in the Department of Mental Health, with joint appointments in the departments of Biostatistics and Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. She received her PhD in statistics in 2004 from Harvard University and worked at Mathematica Policy Research from 2004 to 2006.

“We are thrilled to have Dr. Stuart as part of a growing group of faculty making progress in American health,” says Dean Ellen J. MacKenzie, PhD, ScM. “This support will allow her to expand her many important contributions to multiple areas in public health.”

Stuart is a national leader in developing and communicating methods for estimating causal effects of programs and policies. Specifically, she has extensive experience in methods for estimating causal effects and dealing with the complications of missing data in experimental and non-experimental studies, particularly as applied to mental health, public policy, and education. Stuart has published influential papers on propensity score methods and generalizing treatment effect estimate to target populations. She has also taught courses and short courses on causal inference and propensity scores to a wide range of audiences. More broadly, she has been extensively involved in communicating the value of evidence and balancing rigor and relevance of evidence to broad audiences.

Stuart’s primary areas of application cut across the areas of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, including mental health, substance use, violence, and policy evaluation. She has led the evidence workgroup of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative since the Initiative’s inception and co-leads the evaluation arm of the Bloomberg Opioids Initiative. Stuart is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and has served on multiple National Academy panels. She has been recognized with the mid-career award from the Health Policy Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association, the Gertrude Cox Award for applied statistics, and the Myrto Lefkopoulou award from the Harvard University Department of Biostatistics.

“Dr. Stuart is amazing in her ability to apply a broad range of statistical methods to an even broader range of challenging problems,” says Joshua M. Sharfstein, MD, director of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative. “Where others throw up their hands and say it’s impossible to make sense of complicated observational data, she can see patterns of meaning. She will continue to contribute greatly to the work of finding and implementing new policies and programs that save lives.”

“Dr. Stuart is an incredible asset to our department, school, and the field of public health,” says Daniele Fallin, PhD, chair of the Department of Mental Health. “She has the expertise and experience needed, and, importantly, an incomparable skill for bridging disciplines and making complex statistical strategies accessible to solve public health challenges across mental health, violence, and substance use.”

The Bloomberg American Health Initiative will support 25 endowed positions over the next five years, deepening the Bloomberg School's expertise and impact in the Initiative’s five areas of focus: obesity and the food system, environmental challenges, addiction, violence, and adolescent health.

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Media contacts for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Carly Kempler at ckemple2@jhu.edu and Barbara Benham at bbenham1@jhu.edu.