ScD, Epidemiology
ScM, Epidemiology
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA
BA, Human Biology
Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA
Alison Kawai provides scientific leadership and epidemiology expertise in the planning, design, and execution of studies in her role at RTI HS. Dr. Kawai has over a decade of experience as a pharmacoepidemiologist, with extensive experience using secondary data to assess the utilization and safety of medications and vaccines, including postauthorization safety and other regulatory studies. She has worked extensively in multisite collaborations with data from electronic health records and claims, medical records, and public health registries. She has conducted feasibility assessments and validation studies and worked in a range of therapeutic and disease areas, including cancer, type 2 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and vaccines, with substantial expertise in vaccine safety studies and pregnancy safety studies.
Before joining RTI HS, Dr. Kawai was a research scientist and principal associate in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and Harvard Medical School, where she was an investigator in the Sentinel Program and Vaccine Safety Datalink Project, 2 federally funded postmarket safety surveillance systems that incorporate data from several health insurers across the United States with the use of distributed databases. While there, she worked primarily on studies to evaluate vaccine safety in pregnant women and pediatric populations, as well as on infrastructure activities to develop methods and data capabilities to conduct these and other postmarketing safety studies.