David T. Zhu

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT DAVID T. ZHU

David T. Zhu is a third-year MD/PhD candidate at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine/School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy. His research spans health economics, clinical care delivery, healthcare financialization, and substance use disorders. He is currently developing a macroeconomic theory that economic decline and deindustrialization accelerated the spread of illicitly manufactured fentanyl across the United States, driving the fourth wave of the overdose crisis.He has authored more than 70 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals including The Lancet, The Lancet Regional Health–Americas, JAMA Internal Medicine, JAMA Psychiatry, JAMA Health Forum, JAMA Network Open, Annals of Internal Medicine, Nature Scientific Reports, BMJ Injury Prevention, Addiction, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, and Harm Reduction Journal. He also serves on the editorial board of PLOS One and is an elected member of the American Journal of Public Health Student Think Tank, where he contributes to calls for papers, editorials, podcasts, symposia, and social media initiatives.David is a research associate with the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law (PORTAL) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where he studies the impact of federal drug policy, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, on prescription drug utilization. He has also collaborated with the Veterans Health Administration and Stanford School of Medicine to examine how generative AI and natural language processing tools can facilitate near-real-time detection of emerging drug adulterants in unstructured clinical notes.In addition, David is engaged in mentorship and training as the founder and director of the Center for Integrative Social Medicine and Population Health (CISMPH), a national research collaborative. Through its inaugural fellowship cohort of 35 students and early-career professionals, he teaches quantitative methods and health policy research.He has received numerous national and international honors, including the Diana Award, the Boston Congress of Public Health 40 Under 40 Catalyst Award, the National Minority Quality Forum 40 Under 40 Leaders in Minority Health, and the U.S. Public Health Service Excellence in Public Health Award. Most recently, he was selected as a delegate to the 8th Lindau Nobel Meeting in Economic Sciences in Germany. Full list of publications: http://tinyurl.com/davidtzhu