Join us for an engaging discussion on April 16th led by Ellie Matthay, Assistant Professor of Population Health, on "Causal Inference Challenges in Research on the Health Effects of Social Policies: Heterogeneous Effects and Treatment-Confounder Feedback." This talk will take place at 12:00PM at Berkeley Way West, 5th Floor, Room 5401. Speaker will be presenting remotely.
A growing body of epidemiologic research is examining the health effects of social policies. In this area, researchers face multiple challenges to causal inference, because policies are nuanced and rarely randomized, effects are often imprecisely estimated, and distinct subsets of population are affected differently. In this talk, I will discuss a framework for thinking about these challenges, and address two of them in depth: heterogeneity in the effects of policies across population subgroups and treatment-confounder feedback. For each challenge, I will describe the problem, characterize its magnitude, and discuss practical solutions.