Description:

The Third Coast Center for AIDS Research (TC CFAR) is hosting a hybrid seminar featuring Ado Rivera, MD, PhD, an assistant professor with appointments in the Departments of Medical Social Sciences and Preventative Medicine at Northwestern University. Dr. Rivera will join the Biostatistics and Informatics Team in the TC CFAR's Clinical Sciences Core in May 2025. In this role, he will provide expert consultation for TC CFAR members on a variety of topics including study design, biostatistical analysis, and the harmonization and analysis of complex EMR data. Dr. Rivera also has expertise in quantitative methods such as health disparities decomposition analysis and target trial emulation. Jessica Ridgway, MD, MS, an associate professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago and director of the TC CFAR’s Clinical Sciences Core, will moderate the seminar.

The increased availability and comprehensiveness of electronic health records and administrative data sources has been a boon for health research. However, analysis of these real-world data sources can be susceptible to various sources of bias that can affect validity of results. In this seminar, Dr. Rivera will discuss target trial emulation and how these principles can be applied to various types of causal questions asked in HIV or health disparities research. He will first review the target trial framework and then demonstrate how he has applied the framework to a comparative-effectiveness question and a health disparities question. Dr. Rivera will also share initial results from a collaboration between Northwestern and the University of Chicago that uses electronic health records to study cancer screening outcomes in people living with HIV.

About the Presenter

Dr. Rivera works as a team scientist across several research projects at Northwestern. His research interests include health disparities and people living with HIV, especially as it relates to aging, cardiac disease risk, and quality of medical care.