Freya Nezir, PhD is a Research Assistant Professor in the Center for Mental Health at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Nezir is a health economist and health services researcher, investigating the clinical and economic impacts of healthcare services, policies, and practices. Her research focuses on comprehensive cost assessments and economic evaluations of healthcare interventions and their implementation across diverse community settings. Collaborating with a wide network of research partners, she conducts cost and economic evaluations in clinical and implementation trials for various health conditions, including psychiatric disorders, substance abuse, cancer, HIV, and asthma.
Dr. Nezir’s current research is focused on adapting traditional economic methods to the unique context of implementation science, aiming to enhance the evidence base on cost and economic impact of implementation. Her approach emphasizes rigorous, yet user-friendly methodologies for the collection, analysis, and reporting of economic data, and devising strategies to present this information effectively to stakeholders, ensuring its usefulness for informed decision-making.
Notably, in the emerging field of implementation science, Dr. Nezir has introduced an innovative approach to costing implementation strategies by integrating frameworks from both economic and implementation science domains, resulting in a more precise understanding of implementation costs. Furthermore, her work on autism and developmental disabilities has made substantial contributions to the field by providing estimates of the economic burden on caregivers and society, economic impacts of autism policies, early intervention programs, and service use and costs to healthcare systems. Dr. Nezir, a key co-investigator on numerous NIH and other research foundation grants, also consults community partners, contributing actively to healthcare programmatic and policy decision-making. Dr. Nezir earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Health Services Research at the University of Pennsylvania.
