Alisa J. Stephens-Shields, PhD is an Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Her research focuses on extensions and innovative applications of causal inference approaches to enhance the design and analysis of clinical trials. She also works in the development of patient-reported outcomes to inform population-appropriate trial endpoints and collaborates in clinical trials and observational studies in pediatrics, chronic pain, pharmacoepidemiology, and behavioral economics.
Dr. Stephens-Shields is currently the lead statistical investigator for “Handoffs and Transitions in Critical Care–Understanding Scalability,” a stepped wedge randomized trial aiming to improve patient outcomes through designing and implementing standardized, tailored protocols for transitioning patients from operating rooms to intensive care units, and the recently awarded American Heart Association and Penn Medicine Behavioral Economics to Transform Trial Enrollment Representativeness Center (BETTER), which will evaluate methods to increase diverse participation in clinical trials.
Dr. Stephens-Shields is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association and currently serves as an Associate Editor for the peer-reviewed journals Biostatistics and the Annals of Internal Medicine. She holds a PhD and Master of Arts degree in Biostatistics from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics with a minor in Spanish from the University of Maryland, College Park.
