Kurt Christensen, PhD, MPH

Kurt Christensen is an Assistant Professor of Population Medicine at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and Harvard Medical School whose research focuses on the medical, behavioral, and economic impact of integrating genetics into clinical care. His work has included some of the earliest studies about the benefits, risks, and costs of providing genomic testing to healthy populations. He has examined topics that include the psychological and behavioral benefits of disclosing secondary genomic findings, the medical and health impact of preemptive pharmacogenomic testing, and economic outcomes of population genetic screening. The methods he uses in his work includes simulation modeling (e.g., the PreEMPT Model), observational studies (e.g., the Imagenetics METRICS Study), and randomized trials (e.g., the BabySeq Project).

Focus Areas

• Genomics and precision medicine
• Cost-effectiveness
• Health behaviors
• Genetic screening