My research centers on lifetime health effects of family experiences. In one line of work, I focus on how family environments shape subsequent health and health behaviors. To address threats to causal reasoning in the health effects literature, in another line of work, I examine how early life health shapes an individual's exposure to family and relationship environments (i.e., health selection). In my final line of work, I examine how social structures influence access to reproductive healthcare.

More broadly, much of my research aims to identify health effects using various causal methods (e.g., instrumental variables, twin study design, survey experiments, and natural experiments). I also look for opportunities to address common concerns in measuring health outcomes by leveraging biomarkers. Taken together, these approaches provide me new leverage with which to address long-standing problems concerning causal processes in health.

At Tech, I teach statistics and medical sociology at the undergraduate level and research methods at the graduate level.