Carla Rodriguez-Watson, PhD, MPH
Dr. Carla Rodriguez-Watson is the Director of Research for the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA.
Dr. Rodriguez-Watson is focused on continuously developing and enhancing a portfolio of work that leverages real-world data and experiences to inform and conduct clinical and post-market medical product safety and effectiveness studies to address unmet need and improve population health. An epidemiologist by training, she brings 30 years of experience in public health informatics, surveillance and outbreak investigation; and environmental health, pharmacoepidemiology and health outcomes research to support the diverse scope of the Foundation. Moreover, her years in public health research and surveillance have underscored that the best science is team science.
Prior to her role at the Foundation, Dr. Rodriguez-Watson’s research focus was in clinical epidemiology. As a researcher at Kaiser-Permanente (2013-2019), she had the privilege to work with colleagues across many disciplines with premier real-world data (RWD) from an integrated care-delivery/insurance health system. Her work in infectious diseases was awarded the 2018 James A. Voh’s Regional Quality Award and the Claudette Gravell award for excellence in HCV/HIV research. As a biostatistician with the Centers for AIDS Research (CFAR) Network of Integrated Clinical Systems (CNICS) at the University of Washington (2011-2013), she and her colleagues addressed many challenges of using RWD to understand treatment patterns and health outcomes in patients with HIV, HBV, and HCV.
Dr. Rodriguez-Watson’s passion for public health took root over the decade she spent in outbreak investigation and developing, enhancing, and evaluating active and passive surveillance systems for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and Seattle-King County Public Health (1998-2009). She was part of the team that developed the first electronically integrated vital statistics, lead, and immunization registry for the NYC DOHMH. Her work to further develop and evaluate signals generated by syndromic surveillance systems was the driving force behind her doctoral research, for which she received a CDC dissertation grant award.
Dr. Rodriguez-Watson earned her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Washington School of Public Health, her MPH from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and her BA from Rutgers University.