John Seeger PharmD, MPH, DrPH, FISPE

Dr. John Seeger joined Optum in 2001. In addition to his role as chief scientific officer for Opum Epidemiology, Dr. Seeger is adjunct faculty at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Seeger received a PharmD from the University of Arizona, a Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan, and a Doctor of Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Trained as a clinical pharmacist, Dr. Seeger spent 3 years on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago and also completed a residency in pharmacy practice. He served 5 years on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, Division of Pharmacoepidemiology. Dr. Seeger’s research interests are predictors of drug therapy and the application of research methods that incorporate these predictors. He has worked extensively with propensity scores and related methods that seek to mitigate confounding by modeling drug therapy. He has applied these methods to research on a wide range of therapeutic areas, including diabetes and rheumatologic, cardiovascular, neurologic and gastrointestinal disorders, and vaccine safety and drug effects in pregnancy. Most of this work has involved the application of health insurance claims data as a foundation for studies of post-marketing drug safety. However, the availability of new data resources, such as electronic health records, has expanded the range of questions that can be addressed through observational techniques and correspondingly expanded the scope of Dr. Seeger’s work. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and is a long-standing member, past president, and Fellow of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology.