Victor Puac-Polanco, MD, DrPH, MSCE
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Policy and Management
Dr. Puac-Polanco holds a DrPH in epidemiology from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, a master’s in clinical epidemiology from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and an MD from Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. Most recently, he completed a two-year postdoctoral appointment at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Health Care Policy. Dr. Puac-Polanco has experience in population-based survey designs, implementation, data analysis, and interpretation. He has applied this knowledge to address public health issues in the areas of mental health, injury prevention, global health, and social inequalities. His clinical experiences, combined with training in clinical epidemiology, have allowed him to use different advanced methods to study complex data. During his time at Harvard Medical School, he shifted the focus of his work towards precision medicine, estimating individual differences in the effects of alternative intervention strategies by developing personalized treatment rules. These rules can aid treatment decisions for individual patients when multiple therapeutic options exist. His dissertation examined how drink special laws, which are implemented at the state level, affected mortality rates of motor vehicle crashes related to the use of alcohol. Dr. Puac-Polanco is a current member of the Diversity & Inclusion Committee of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and an active collaborator on research projects in Latin America, demonstrating his commitment to participating in initiatives to serve disadvantaged populations and underrepresented groups in academia.