Our Team

About

Louisa Smith is an epidemiologist who focuses on developing and applying methods for causal inference in public health research. Her work uses observational data to answer questions about effects on health, with a special focus on pregnancy and birth outcomes. Dr. Smith approaches her applied research using a target trial framework, through which she has helped to clarify questions about exposures during pregnancy and to improve understanding of the effects of COVID-19 on birth outcomes. Her work in prostate and breast cancer addresses questions about complex treatment strategies over time. Her previous work on sensitivity analysis extended the E-value framework to quantify possible effects of selection bias, alone and jointly with other biases. Current work includes addressing missing data in electronic health records and in large observational studies. She has also contributed to the literature on mediation, including sensitivity analysis for unmeasured mediator-outcome confounding. Dr. Smith received her PhD in population health sciences and an MS in biostatistics from Harvard University, as well as an MS in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley. Before that she spent several years teaching elementary school in rural South Dakota and continues to be passionate about teaching.

Learn about Louisa Smith’s prior post-doctoral work at the OHDSI Center.

Ask her about:

• causal inference
• post-doctoral research at the OHDSI Center
• perinatal health and pregnancy research in OHDSI