UAB's Bisakha Sen To Co-Chair Committee For National Academies Of Science, Engineering And Medicine

From the University of Alabama at Birmingham:

January 26, 2021

By Holly Gainer

Bisakha Sen, Ph.D., the Blue Cross Blue Shield Endowed Chair in Health Economics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, will be co-chair of an expert review committee for the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.

As co-chair, Sen will work with a team of leading health scientists to review the results of a large study by the Department of Veterans Affairs on how service dogs and emotional support dogs help veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. The committee will focus on outcomes related to health care utilization and health economics.

“The opportunity to serve as an expert on a NASEM committee is a great honor for any academic, and I am grateful and excited to be given this role,” Sen said. “As someone whose main focus is policies and interventions that help vulnerable populations, I am excited to be part of something that can help alleviate the fallout from PTSD, which is a leading cause of impairment of quality of life and functioning among veterans.”

Susan Busch, Ph.D., Yale School of Public Health, is the other co-chair. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide expert advice on some of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and world.

This press release was produced by the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The views expressed here are the author’s own.