Rahul Ladhania

Assistant Professor of Health Informatics, Health Management & Policy

Machine learning and causal inference in health

Rahul Ladhania is an Assistant Professor of Health Informatics in the Department of Health Management & Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He also has a secondary (courtesy) appointment with the Department of Biostatistics at SPH. Rahul’s research is in the area of causal inference and machine learning in public and behavioral health. A large body of his work focuses on estimating personalized treatment rules and heterogeneous effects of policy, digital and behavioral interventions on human behavior and health outcomes in complex experimental and observational settings using statistical machine learning methods.

Rahul co-leads the Machine Learning team at the Behavior Change For Good Initiative (Penn), where he is working on two `mega-studies’ (very large multi-arm randomized trials): one in partnership with a national fitness chain, to estimate the effects of behavioral interventions on promoting gym visit habit formation; and the other in partnership with two large Mid-Atlantic health systems and a national pharmacy chain, to estimate the effects of text-based interventions on increasing flu shot vaccination rates. His other projects involve partnerships with step-counting apps and mobile-based games to learn user behavior patterns, and design and evaluate interventions and their heterogeneous effects on user behavior.


Accomplishments and Awards