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James Guevara MD, MPH

Faculty Member

James Guevara is a founding member of PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, senior fellow at the Center for Public Health Initiatives, and an attending physician at CHOP. He is also a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, a senior scholar at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Lead Diversity Search Advisor at the University of Pennsylvania.

  • We can stop the trend of children from impoverished families starting school already behind their peers. If we focus on early childhood development, we can get these kids the intervention sources they need at the time they need them.
     

  • PolicyLab has a unique approach to its research process, specifically because we start thinking about the dissemination process right at the beginning. We don’t get our research published and then think about how to get it in the right hands. Instead, we work with policymakers and the implementers throughout the research process, so by the time our research is published, our intended audience is no longer just an audience; they are now stakeholders.

Dr. Guevara was elected to the executive committee of the Council on Early Childhood for the American Academy of Pediatrics for a three-year term beginning in 2019. He has interests in the organization, financing, and delivery of health care services to children with developmental and behavioral disabilities. He has previously published on the medical expenditures and health disparities among children with chronic health conditions. Dr. Guevara is the principal investigator on three current awards. In the first (R01MD011598), he is studying the effectiveness of patient navigation on completion of early intervention referrals and child development among children with developmental delays. In the second (R61MH118405), he is testing the effects of a novel social media-based parenting program for women with postpartum depressive symptoms. In the third award funded by the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, he is piloting three behavioral economic approaches to parent-child shared reading behaviors. Through these diverse research initiatives, Dr. Guevara has focused on improving the delivery of health care in primary care settings, reducing health disparities, and translating research findings into practice and policy.

Dr. Guevara received his MD from Northwestern University and also holds an MPH from the University of Washington.