Smith Center Faculty

Our Team

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Our team unequivocally embraces inclusiveness and equity. We pledge to continue through our work and actions to shine a light on racial disparities in health access and outcomes, and to identify solutions for positive change. We commit ourselves to being anti-racist, challenging the status-quo and striving for a just world.

Investigators

Robert W. Yeh, MD, MSc, MBA

Robert W. Yeh, MD, MSc, MBA is the Director of the Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Center for Outcomes Research in Cardiology and Section Chief of Interventional Cardiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and the Katz Silver Family Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Medicine in the Field of Outcomes Research in Cardiology at Harvard Medical School. His area of investigation focuses on evaluating cardiovascular devices and therapies in both clinical trials and observational studies, with an emphasis on understanding methods to improve the value of novel technologies as they are used in clinical practice. He serves as the Medical Director of Trial Design for the Baim Institute for Clinical Research. His clinical area of expertise is in interventional cardiology, with an emphasis in coronary chronic total occlusion intervention.

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Dhruv Kazi, MD, MSc, MS

Dhruv Kazi, MD, MSc, MS serves as the Section Head of Health Economics and the Associate Director of the Smith Center. At BIDMC, he is the Director of the Cardiac Critical Care Unit. He is a general cardiologist and health economist who uses real-world data and mathematical modeling to examine the clinical and economic effects of diagnostic tests, new therapies, and public health measures on the cardiovascular health of the population. Dr. Kazi is interested in understanding how such interventions affect different sections of society, particularly the most vulnerable populations in the U.S. and overseas. He earned his MD from the University of Mumbai, his MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and his MS from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

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Daniel Kramer, MD, MPH

Daniel Kramer, MD, MPH is the Section Head of Electrophysiology and Digital Health at the Smith Center and the Director of Pacemaker and ICD Service at BIDMC. In addition, he is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a faculty member of the Harvard Center for Bioethics. A former Beeson Scholar and Greenwall Faculty Scholar in Bioethics, Dr. Kramer's research focuses on clinical policy and ethics questions arising from the use of medical devices. Current work in progress includes an NIH-funded prospective study of clinical trajectories following ICD implantation, bioethical and regulatory considerations in digital diagnostics, and new clinical trials evaluating novel aspects of device-based therapy for arrhythmias.

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Jordan B. Strom, MD, MSc

Jordan B. Strom, MD, MSc was the inaugural fellow at the Smith Center and is now the Center’s Section Head of Cardiovascular Imaging Research. He is also the Director of the Echocardiography Laboratory at BIDMC and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His work involves evaluation of the impact of public policies, care structures, and imaging on cardiovascular health outcomes, as well as the development of novel tools for pre-procedural risk stratification, especially for valvular heart disease. Dr. Strom is a non-invasive cardiologist specializing in echocardiography and cardiovascular magnetic resonance at BIDMC.

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Eric A. Secemsky, MD, MSc

Eric A. Secemsky, MD, MSc is the Section Head of Interventional Cardiology and Vascular Research at the Smith Center. He is the Director of Vascular Intervention in the CardioVascular Institute at BIDMC and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Secemsky's research focuses on the comparative effectiveness of coronary and vascular therapies, with an emphasis on the use of novel statistical methods. He also examines outcomes related to cardiovascular disorders and the use of risk prediction models to guide treatment.

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Rishi Wadhera, MD, MPP, MPhil

Rishi Wadhera, MD, MPP, MPhil is the Section Head of Health Policy and Equity Research at the Smith Center, Clinical Lead for High Value Care at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a general cardiologist at BIDMC. He received his MD from the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine and completed his Internal Medicine residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He received his MPhil in Public Health from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar and his Master's in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government as a Jerome Grossman Health Policy Fellow. His research works include the impact of national health policy initiatives on healthcare spending, care quality, and outcomes; the impact of these initiatives on racial disparities in care; and the effect of insurance expansions on care delivery and outcomes.

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Anna Krawisz, MD

Anna Krawisz, MD is an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a cardiologist and vascular medicine specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). Her research interests include disparities in care for peripheral artery disease and interventional therapies for peripheral artery disease, and a clinical focus on refractory hypertension and vascular medicine. During her fellowship at BIDMC, she served as Chief Cardiology Fellow, and was awarded the Jay D. Coffman Early Career Investigator Award from the American Heart Association and was a finalist for the American College of Cardiology Young Investigator Award. She completed her MD at the Stanford University School of Medicine where she was the recipient of a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Medical Fellows research award.

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Issa Dahabreh, MD, MS, ScD

Issa Dahabreh, MD, MS, ScD is the Section Head of Epidemiology and Data Science at the Smith Center and an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research focuses on the development of novel methods of extending causal inferences from one or more trials to target populations and transporting clinical prediction models. Dr. Dahabreh earned his MD from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, his MS in clinical and translational science from the Sackler School of Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University, and his ScD in epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

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Mabel Chung, MD

Mabel Chung, MD is an Assistant Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and a cardiothoracic anesthesiologist and intensivist at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is currently a T32 trainee and research fellow at the Smith Center investigating perioperative outcomes in heart failure patients undergoing noncardiac surgery. Her clinical area of expertise is in cardiothoracic anesthesia and critical care with a focus on mechanical circulatory support, including ventricular assist devices and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.

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Yang Song, MSc

Yang Song, MSc is the Biostatistical Manager at the Smith Center. He has 7 years of work experience using SAS and R for statistical research and programming, and he has supported more than 30 publications in clinical trials and research proposals in the field of cardiovascular health. Yang’s comprehensive statistical methods knowledge and hands-on programming skills facilitate his handling of a range of data sources, including new drug and medical device clinical trials, NCDR Registries, CMS Medicare Claims, and raw EHR data. As a current BU PhD student, his research interests include clinical trial designs and observational studies.

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ZhaoNian Zheng, MSc

ZhaoNian Zheng, MSc is the Lead Statistician at the Smith Center. He has 5 years of experience in statistical research and programming using SAS and R. With a background in biostatistics and machine learning, he has effectively utilized CMS claims data and survey data to evaluate health outcomes and disparities among working-age adults. ZhaoNian's research is dedicated to finding new insights and solutions to improve health outcomes and reduce disparities.

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Brett Carroll, MD

Brett Carroll, MD is the Director of the Section of Vascular Medicine and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He directs the BIDMC pulmonary embolism response team, is the medical director of the BIDMC Aortic Center, and director of lymphatic medicine. His research interests include venous thromboembolism, aortic disease, and lymphedema. He utilizes large administrative datasets to evaluate vascular diseases.

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Darae Ko, MD, MSc

Darae Ko, MD, MSc is Assistant Scientist II at Marcus Institute for Aging Research/Hebrew SeniorLife, BIDMC, Member of Faculty at Harvard Medical School, and practices as a general cardiologist at Boston Medical Center. Dr. Ko is dedicated to generating evidence for and implementation of safe and effective novel cardiovascular therapies in medically complex older adults. She is an expert in geriatric pharmacoepidemiology and leads Medicare Data- Atrial Fibrillation Outcomes Research Program at Marcus Institute.

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Dhaval Kolte, MD, PhD

Dhaval Kolte, MD, PhD is a Structural Interventional Cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kolte’s research focuses on understanding the reasons underlying hospital-level variation in outcomes of transcatheter heart valve interventions and identifying modifiable practices and processes of care associated with improved outcomes. He is also interested in comparative effectiveness of transcatheter heart valve therapies. His clinical area of expertise is in interventional cardiology, with an emphasis in structural heart disease and transcatheter aortic, mitral, and tricuspid valve interventions.

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Anica Law, MD, MSc

Anica Law, MD, MSc is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Boston University. She is a pulmonary-critical care physician and a health services researcher with a focus on improving outcomes of critically ill patients. Her research leverages large clinical and administrative databases to characterize the effects of external (e.g. legislation), internal (e.g. hospital and provider), and patient drivers on practice patterns, as well as to determine how practice pattern variations affect long-term outcomes of the critically ill.

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Peter Zimetbaum, MD

Peter Zimetbaum, MD is Associate Chief and Director of Clinical Cardiology at BIDMC and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on new drug therapies for arrhythmias, health services research and cardiovascular outcomes.

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Fellows & Trainees

Staff