Dr. Gellad’s research focuses on physician prescribing practices and on policy issues affecting access and adherence to medications for patients, optimizing the quality, safety, and value of prescribing and prescription drug use. He is a nationally recognized authority on improving the measurement of medication adherence, has authored more than 100 articles in leading medical and policy journals, and he is a regular commentator on pharmaceutical policy issues in major news outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR, and the Wall Street Journal.

He was the recipient of a VA career development award to study the quality and efficiency of prescribing in the VA and continues to lead research funded by the VA, NIH, CDC, and the state of Pennsylvania on multiple studies of pharmaceutical policy and prescription use.

His work spans clinical areas, from diabetes, to Hepatitis C, to prescription drug and substance abuse. His policy area of expertise is prescription drug pricing and spending. He is a former member of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee on nonprescription drugs and currently an alternate member of the FDA Drug Safety Oversight Board.

Dr. Gellad is board certified in internal medicine and completed a residency and chief residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

What are the 3 most important questions that define your research program?

1. What is the clinical impact of adding CMS prescription data to ongoing VA medication safety surveillance efforts that currently use VA data only?
2. How can we apply machine-learning techniques to health data to predict opioid related adverse events?
3. What are some measures by which we can define, assess, and promote conservative prescribing?