Research

My research centers on aging and health, especially frailty: how health declines with age, how to measure that decline, and how gradual decline differs from acute health shocks. I apply econometric and biostatistical methods to large aging panels and health surveys (HRS, ELSA, SHARE, CHARLS, NHANES) and contribute to the Global Burden of Disease Study. My methods include difference-in-differences with staggered adoption, event-study and panel methods, survival analysis, multiple imputation, g-computation, complex-survey weighting, and double/debiased machine learning.

The full list of papers and conference presentations is on the Publications page.

Research interests

  • Applied economics of aging and health, centered on frailty indices
  • Gradual frailty in later life versus acute health shocks
  • Causal inference, applied econometrics, and biostatistics for panel and survey data
  • Measuring health and longevity: biomarkers, dementia case definitions, survival expectations
  • Global burden of disease, health policy, and health equity
  • Quantitative health sciences and clinical research methodology: cost-effectiveness and value-of-information analysis, psychometrics, survival analysis, cancer-registry cohorts
  • Disaster recovery and community resilience

Research positions & projects

Senior Collaborator & peer reviewer — Global Burden of Disease Study 2023, IHME, University of Washington (2025–present; Senior Collaborator since September 2026). Peer-reviewed ten GBD 2023 estimation manuscripts on cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative disease, metabolic disease, mental disorders, dietary and environmental risks, antimicrobial resistance, and population ageing. Co-author, under the GBD collaborators’ group authorship, of six GBD 2023 papers now under review at The Lancet, The Lancet Public Health, The Lancet Oncology, The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific, and The Lancet Primary Care (see Publications).

Research Allied Health Professional — The Queen’s Medical Center, Honolulu (2025–2026). Built and audited an analytic colorectal-cancer cohort from the hospital cancer registry (2010–2024) for an IRB-approved study, and estimated disparities in early-onset diagnosis, stage, and survival with logistic and Cox models benchmarked against SEER, in collaboration with the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, John A. Burns School of Medicine.

Graduate Research Assistant — UHERO, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (2024–present)

  • Maui Wildfire Exposure Study (MauiWES) — NIH- and state-funded longitudinal cohort; data entry, on-site support at data-collection events, and descriptive analyses (2024–present).
  • Kaiona Survey Project — youth health and well-being survey and program evaluation, in partnership with Waiʻanae Coast Comprehensive Health Center (2025–present).
  • Roots Reborn Program Evaluation — post-wildfire economic-empowerment intervention (2025–2026).
  • Small Business Success in Honolulu — City & County of Honolulu Office of Economic Revitalization; co-authored UHERO report (2024–2025).

Peer reviewer — Public Health in Practice (Elsevier, 2025–present) and Aging (2026); abstract reviewer for the Gerontological Society of America 2026 Annual Scientific Meeting; reviewer, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Graduate Student Organization Merit-Based Awards (2026).

Dissertation

My dissertation studies health shocks, frailty, and economic behavior in aging populations, using panel methods and causal-inference designs.

Chapter 1. Working Through Frailty: Chronic versus Acute Health Shocks and the Margins of Labor Supply. To be presented at the Southern Economic Association (SEA) 96th Annual Meeting, Houston, TX, November 2026.

Chapter 2. Falls, Missing Markets, and Labor Supply: Evidence from China.

Chapter 3. Later, Longer, Fewer and the Quantity–Quality Trade-off: Evidence from CHARLS.