Brita Roy, MD, MPH, MHS

Fellow Project

As defined by the World Health Organization in 1948, health is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Until recently, however, we have lacked the necessary data to study the well-being of the nation and how it varies geographically, over time, and across subpopulations. Instead, for decades, researchers have studied variations and trends in mortality, disease states, and healthcare utilization as proxies for the health of our nation. Now, with access to ten years of national data, there is the potential to describe the well-being of the U.S. population over a decade and for various subpopulations.

As a TIIH Fellow, Carley Riley, MD, MPP, MHS and her research partner at Yale University, Brita Roy, MD, MPH, MHS, are examining the current state of well-being in the U.S. and trends and geographic variation in well-being over a ten-year period, and the state of well-being (and inequities in well-being) for various subpopulations. These results will provide healthcare providers and systems, public health organizations, policymakers, and other stakeholders with an understanding of the true health of our nation.

Biography

Brita Roy, MD, MPH, MHS is an Assistant Professor at the Yale Schools of Medicine and Public Health and Director of Population Health for Yale Medicine and the Center for Research Engagement.

Dr. Roy is Assistant Professor in the Section of General Internal Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, as well as Director of Population Health for Yale Medicine, the Yale University multi-specialty faculty practice. Her scholarly work focuses on assessing the relative contribution of positive psychosocial factors to population health outcomes and health equity at the individual and community levels. Dr. Roy is also interested in the implementation of multi-disciplinary, assets-based, effective community-healthcare collaborative interventions to improve population health and well-being. She co-leads the Yale-Gallup Well-being Research Team and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI) 100 Million Healthier Lives measurement team and is faculty for the IHI Pathways to Population Health Action Community.

Dr. Roy pursued Bachelors and Master’s degrees in Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University and Wayne State University, respectively. She then went on to the University of Michigan to pursue a combined MD/MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education. Dr. Roy subsequently completed residency training in internal medicine and served as Chief Medical Resident at the University of Alabama at Birmingham prior to completing the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale University.