Dr. Bisakha “Pia” Sen, PhD is a tenured Professor in the Department of Health Care Organization and Policy of the School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She has a secondary appointment in the Department of Health Services Administration of the School of Health Professions. Dr. Sen has affiliations with the Nutrition Obesity Research Center, Lister Hill Center for Health Policy, and O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center. She received her PhD in Economics from The Ohio State University in 1998. Dr. Sen is the first holder of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Endowed Chair in Health Economics and the first woman to hold an endowed chair faculty position in the school.
Dr. Sen specializes in health economics and health policy, and her primary interest is investigating the role of policy, programmatic interventions, and social determinants on the health of vulnerable populations. Dr. Sen and her colleagues have developed an extensive research agenda focusing on health outcomes among Alabama residents, with funding support from Alabama Medicaid and the ALL Kids Children’s Health Insurance Program administered by the Alabama Department of Public Health. In addition, Dr Sen’s work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and several other funding institutions. Her research has been published in journals such as JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, Pediatrics, Health Services Research, American Journal of Public Health, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Journal of Health Economics, and Health Economics.
