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David Rein

Pronouns: He/Him

Senior Fellow
David is an internationally recognized expert in visual disorders, viral hepatitis, and the use of secondary EHR and administrative claims data to improve surveillance, cost-effectiveness, and econometric estimates.

David is a senior fellow and the director of NORC’s Public Health Analytics Program. He currently specializes in developing surveillance assets based on secondary data sources, health economics, and comparative effectiveness evaluations. David is an internationally recognized expert in visual disorders, viral hepatitis, and the use of secondary EHR and administrative claims data to improve surveillance, cost-effectiveness, and econometric estimates. David brings over 25 years of experience in public health research, practice, and policy, and is a first, senior or contributing author on more than 75 peer-reviewed publications. In 2015, David founded NORC’s Public Health Analytics Program, which is devoted to using quantitative data sources to answer questions of public health importance.

David is the Principal Investigator of the CDC’s Vision and Eye Health Surveillance System (VEHSS), a second project to develop state and county small area estimates of hearing loss, and a third National Institute of Aging R01 Grant to develop a surveillance system of diagnosed Alzheimer’s Dementia and Alzheimer’s Related Dementias. In other recent work, David worked with the CDC’s Vision Health Initiative to estimate the economic burden of vision loss and blindness in the United States. He has worked with CDC partners such as the Division of Injury Prevention and the Division of Viral Hepatitis to develop randomized experimental trials to estimate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of public health efforts to prevent falls and to increase testing for hepatitis C. David is also interested in health communication and has worked with CDC Foundation to create an interactive falls risk screening tool and a fall prevention planning tool. 

Prior to joining NORC in 2011, David was a Senior Research Economist at RTI where he led efforts to develop epidemiological forecasting and cost-effectiveness models for vision disorders, hepatitis A, B, and C. His work was used to support the adoption of universal hepatitis A vaccination by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, to recommend birth cohort hepatitis C testing by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, and by the National Center for Quality Assurance to support a glaucoma screening HEDIS measure. David began his public health career as an ORISE Fellow at CDC where he authored a foundational manuscript on the economic burden of Pelvic Inflammatory Disease and the association of mental health diagnoses and sexually transmitted infections.

Education

PhD

Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State University

MPA

Wagner School of Government, New York University

BA

New York University

Appointments & Affiliations

Editor

Ophthalmic Epidemiology

Member

American Academy of Ophthalmology

Member

Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology

Member

Gerontological Society of America

Honors & Awards

Highly Published Author Award | 2022

NORC at the University of Chicago

Most Outstanding Project Award | 2020

American Public Health Association Vision Care Section

Viral Hepatitis Action Coalition | 2017

Viral Hepatitis Action Coalition

Oberdorfer Award in Low Vision | 2014

Association for Research in Vision in Ophthalmology

Most Outstanding Project Award | 2012

American Public Health Association Vision Care Section

Poster of Distinction | 2011

American Association for the Study of Liver Disease

Outstanding Paper Author’s Award | 2007

RTI

Faculty Award, Top Public Policy PhD Candidate | 2003

Georgia Institute of Technology

NCHHSTP Nominee, Charles G. Shepherd Science Award (co-author) | 1986

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Project Contributions

Test Predictability of Falls Screening Tools

NORC identified a set of questions to predict falls in older adults, beyond falls risk factors.

Client:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Improving and Enhancing U.S. Vision & Eye Health Surveillance

The most comprehensive system to track eye diseases and vision loss

Client:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Diabetes Translation, Vision Health Initiative

Development of an Interactive Fall Prevention Planning Tool

Online comprehensive tool to increase awareness of fall risk and prevent falls among older adults

Client:

CDC Foundation

Network-Driven COVID-19 Prevention for Vulnerable Populations (RADx-UP)

Randomized control trials to evaluate network-based approaches to promote COVID-19 prevention

Client:

National Institute of Drug Abuse

Improving HIV Health Outcomes for Black Men Who Have Sex with Men

Evaluating clinical care and behavioral health support services for Black MSM with HIV

Funder:

Health Resources and Services Administration

Equitably Promoting a Hypertension Control Method

Determining if the Hypertension Management Program is effective in high-burden, low-resourced health care settings

Funder:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention

Expanding Hearing Loss Education & Awareness

The nation’s first ever state- and county-level hearing loss prevalence estimates

Client:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Publications