Bita Fayaz-Farkhad, Ph.D.
- Research Assistant Professor, Social Action Lab
Bita Farkhad’s research concerns how public programs and policies affect individuals’ health and behavior and involve the use of microeconometric methods to evaluate and inform public policy.
Farkhad completed her Ph.D. in Economics from Lehigh University in 2019. She is an applied microeconomist with interests in health and public policy. At present, her research primarily focuses on examining the impact of the Affordable Care Act on early-stage HIV diagnosis and access to HIV preventive care and the role of harm reduction policies such as syringe exchange programs on substance use. Another line of her research uses big data and deep/machine learning techniques of natural language processing to assess community-level behaviors.
Education
- B.S., Sharif University of Technology, 2010
- M.S., Sharif University of Technology, 2014
- Ph.D., Lehigh University, 2019
State Laws Shape the Social Norms Around Vaccines — and Get People Vaccinated
In an effort to understand what encourages people to get vaccinated, researchers from the Social Action Lab and the Annenberg Public Policy Center examined how state laws and policies affect vaccination rates.
