Departmental Affiliations
Center & Institute Affiliations
Contact Info
Research Interests
As a preventive medicine-public health physician and clinical informatician, I focus on population health, social and behavioral determinants of health and health information technology. My main field of interest is the impact of social and behavioral determinants of health on health-related outcomes using health IT and Big Data. I am involved in a number of projects in this area. At CPHIT I led the development of population health framework and measurements for Maryland, a collaboration with Maryland Health Information Exchange (i.e., CRISP - Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients) supported through Maryland State Improvement Model and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. I also led the project to incorporate relevant available community/population-level data sources into the Veterans Health Administration (VHA)'s electronic health records. This project evaluated the health outcomes such as hospitalization rate at the primary care level while addressing social determinants of health. In addition, in collaboration with other faculty at CPHIT, I work on new methods of data mining and natural language processing to address social determinants of health using structured and unstructured electronic health records (EHR) data and publicly available population-level data such as U.S. Census. Keywords; Population Health; Social and Behavioral Determinants of Health; Preventive Medicine; Health Information Technology; Clinical Informatics
Experiences & Accomplishments
Elham Hatef, MD, MPH earned her medical degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences, in Tehran, Iran, and her Master in Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHBSPH). Dr. Hatef completed a preliminary year in Internal Medicine at Yale-affiliated Griffin Hospital in Connecticut and the Preventive Medicine Residency and Chief Residency at JHBSPH. She then completed the Clinical Informatics Practice Pathway at JHBSPH. Dr. Hatef is board certified in Preventive Medicine-Public Health and Clinical Informatics.
Dr. Hatef moved to the United States in 2006, where she learned to conduct clinical research in preventive medicine with a focus on preventive ophthalmology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. She continued to pursue her interest in preventive medicine and prevention of blindness as a research postdoctoral fellow at Wilmer Eye Institute and as an MPH student with a focus on Epidemiology and Biostatistics at JHBSPH. She also worked with Cochrane Eye and Vision Group on systematic reviews in this field. After completing her training at JHBSPH she joined the Center for Population Health IT (CPHIT) where she conducts a number of projects in preventive medicine and population health with a focus on social determinants of health, using health information technology and Big Data. She also serves as the academic director of the Johns Hopkins General Preventive Medicine Residency Program.
Honors & Awards
Selected Honors
2016-Present: Graduate Medical Education Committee, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
2018-Present: Fellow of American College of Preventive Medicine, Washington, D.C.
2018-Present: American College of Preventive Medicine, Clinical Informatics Special Interest Group, Founding Member and Chair, Washington, D.C.
Selected Awards
2019 - President’s Award, American College of Preventive Medicine, Washington, D.C.
2018 - Travel Grant, Social Interventions Research & Evaluation Network (SIREN), University of California, San Francisco, State of the Science: A National Research Meeting on Medical & Social Care Integration
Select Publications
Selected Publications;
Clinical Informatics & Population Health IT: Hatef E, Ma X, Rouhizadeh M, Singh G, Weiner JP, Kharrazi H. Assessing the Impact of Social Needs and Social Determinants of Health on Health Care Utilization: Using Patient- and Community-Level Data. Popul Health Manag. 2020 Jun 25. doi: 10.1089/pop.2020.0043. Online ahead of print. PMID: 32598228
Preventive Medicine & Public Health: Hatef E, Lam C. Clinical Preventive Medicine: Causing More Identity Crisis for Preventive Medicine or Helping to Manage the Crisis. Am J Prev Med. 2017 Oct;53(4):e151-e152. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2017.04.016. PMID: 28935091
Prevention of Blindness: Hatef E, Vanderver BG, Fagan P, Albert M, Alexander M. Annual diabetic eye examinations in a managed care Medicaid population.Am J Manag Care. 2015 May 1;21(5):e297-302. PMID: 26167777