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Elizabeth A. Suarez, PhD, MPH

Instructor
Core Faculty
Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research 

Elizabeth Suarez is a pharmacoepidemiologist focused on studying the use and safety of medications in pregnancy. She received her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her MPH in Epidemiology from Boston University. After completing her doctoral work, Dr. Suarez held a postdoctoral fellowship with the Sentinel Operations Center at the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and Harvard Medical School, where she led and contributed to projects on use of tree-based scan statistics for surveillance of medication use during pregnancy for the FDA Sentinel Initiative. She then continued to a second postdoctoral fellowship with the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where she worked with the Harvard Program on Perinatal and Pediatric Pharmacoepidemiology (H4P) on various studies of medication safety in pregnancy using Medicaid and private insurance claims data. Dr. Suarez’s research has focused on novel methods for studying medication safety in pregnancy using healthcare utilization data, including both insurance claims and electronic health records. Her recent research has involved the safety of antidepressants and medications for opioid use disorder in pregnancy.

 

Research Profile:

Pharmacoepidemiology, Perinatal Epidemiology, Birth defects, Pregnancy, Mental Health, Substance Use Disorders

 

Selected Publications:

  1. Straub L, Hernandez-Diaz S, Bateman BT, Wisner KL, Gray KJ, Pennell PB, Lester B, McDougle CJ, Suarez EA, Zhu Y, Zakoul H, Mogun H, Huybrechts KF. Antipsychotic Drug Exposure in Pregnancy and Risk of Neurodevelopmental Disorders. JAMA Internal Medicine. Published online March 28, 2022.
  2. Suarez EA, Haug N, Hansbury A, Stojanovic D, Corey C. Prescription medication use and baseline health status of women with live-birth deliveries in a national data network. Am J Obstet Gynecol MFM. 2022 Jan;4(1):100512.
  3. Suarez EA, Boggess K, Engel SM, Stürmer T, Lund JL, Funk MJ. Ondansetron use in early pregnancy and the risk of late pregnancy outcomes. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2021 Feb;30(2):114-125.
  4. Suarez EA, Boggess K, Engel SM, Stürmer T, Lund JL, Funk MJ. Ondansetron use in early pregnancy and the risk of miscarriage. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2021 Feb;30(2):103-113.