Denise Dougherty, PhD

Denise Dougherty, PhD

Denise Dougherty, Ph.D. is the Coordinator of Child Health Activities for AHRQ. As coordinator, she leads AHRQ's Internal Child Health Advisory Group, contributes to AHRQ's policy development in children's and adolescents' health issues, and works with other federal agencies and relevant external groups on children's and adolescents' health concerns. She wrote the departmental report to Congress, "Pediatric Outcomes Research." Before joining AHRQ in March 1996, she worked in various roles at the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment. As a program director, she oversaw studies in the residential technologies for elderly people and people with disabilities, educational technology, and technologies in the school-to-work transition. She spent most of her OTA career in OTA's health program, directing and contributing to reports on issues as diverse as quality of care, blood policy and technology, Native American health, mental health, adolescent health, cost-effectiveness of breast cancer screening, the relationship between health insurance status and health outcomes, and the assumptions underlying economic forecasts of alternative health reforms. She holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from Boston University, and spent her pre-Ph.D. years as a municipal finance analyst on Wall Street.