Alumna Researches Healthcare Access Effects.
Maya McDoom (’14) is beginning work as a postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins University’s Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research.
She will examine how healthcare access—and the quality of that healthcare—impacts cardiovascular and chronic kidney disease outcomes.
McDoom completed a doctorate in health services research in the School of Public Department of Health Law, Policy, & Management. She went on to the Delta Public Health Fellowship, a two-year joint postdoctoral appointment at Mississippi State University and Harvard University. During that time she worked on the Rural Hospitals Project, using economic health data to categorize the potential closing risk levels of hospitals in Mississippi and examining policy issues related to keeping at-risk hospitals—those serving small communities with disproportionately high need for health services—open and operational.
At Johns Hopkins, McDoom will continue to study healthcare access, this time focusing on the patient and community level. Her research will use data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, which investigated variation in cardiovascular disease risk factors; medical care; and disease by race, gender, and location in four cities across the US.
McDoom says this is an important time to be examining healthcare access and outcomes. “Now that we’re thinking about the effects of the Affordable Care Act,” she says, “many states expanded their healthcare systems,” with more people able to receive care. “What are the external influences for them getting into care, and getting the right kind of care?”
Hypothetical access to healthcare, McDoom says, isn’t enough. “We want to improve the care and the quality of care that people are receiving, and ultimately improve their health,” she says.