Donna Spiegelman

Donna Spiegelman serves as the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Biostatistics at Yale School of Public Health, Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Yale University, and Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine) at Yale School of Medicine. She is also the Director of the Center for Methods in Implementation and Prevention Science (CMIPS) and Assistant Director of Global Oncology at Yale Cancer Center. Her academic appointments span multiple departments including Biostatistics, Statistics, Medicine, and various research centers across Yale's health sciences campus.

Dr. Spiegelman earned her ScD in Biostatistics and Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health in 1989, following an MS in Biostatistics (1985) and BA in Psychology from Brandeis University (1977). Before joining Yale in 2018, she spent nearly 30 years as a professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. As one of the few researchers with a joint doctorate in biostatistics and epidemiology, she uniquely bridges these disciplines to address complex public health challenges.

Her research focuses on implementation science, prevention science, and biostatistical methodology development. She examines barriers to implementing evidence-based interventions and develops statistical methods to address these challenges, including stepped-wedge and cluster randomized trials, causal inference methods, and techniques to correct for measurement error. Her work spans cancer prevention, HIV/AIDS care, cardiovascular disease, maternal and child health, and mental health promotion, with significant emphasis on global health applications.

Dr. Spiegelman has received numerous accolades including being named a Highly Cited Researcher for four consecutive years (2018-2021), a Team Research Prize from Yale School of Public Health (2021), and recognition as a top female scientist. Her publication record demonstrates consistent contributions to methodological innovation with recent work focusing on integrated care models for HIV and hypertension, measurement error correction, and causal inference methods.

As founder and director of CMIPS, she leads a multidisciplinary team developing innovative approaches to implementation science. The center focuses on translating research into practice, addressing the critical gap where only 14% of biomedical research is ever implemented, with 17 years passing on average from research submission to implementation. Her work has direct implications for improving healthcare delivery systems worldwide, particularly in resource-limited settings.