Marissa Reitsma

Marissa Reitsma is a Health Policy PhD student in the Decision Sciences track and Knight-Hennessy Scholar. Prior to joining Stanford in 2019, she worked for five years as a research fellow at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). At IHME, she worked on the Global Burden of Disease study, modeling the health effects of obesity, smoking, alcohol use, and drug use. Additional previous research experience includes laboratory-based research on HIV drug resistance and primary data collection work to improve tobacco surveillance systems in resource-constrained settings. Broadly, she is interested in developing applied quantitative models to reduce health inequalities, both within countries and between countries. She holds a bachelor's degree in Biology from Brown University.