Davene Wright

Davene R. Wright, PhD is a health care researcher who uses decision sciences methodologies to design interventions and promote policies that can improve the management of pediatric chronic diseases. Dr. Wright is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Medicine, a research and academic partnership between the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and Harvard Medical School. There, she is part of the Center for Healthcare Research in Pediatrics and the Division of Chronic Disease Across the Lifecourse and she is on faculty in the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy. Until 2019, Dr. Wright was an Assistant Professor in the University of Washington Departments of Pediatrics and Pharmacy.

Dr. Wright received a BS in Polymer and Textile Chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology where she was a President’s Scholar and ORISE Fellow. She earned her PhD in Health Policy and Decision Sciences from Harvard University in 2012 where she was a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Dr. Wright is a Trustee of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM), the co-Chair of the Decision Sciences for Child Health Collaborative, is on the Oversight Advisory Committee for the American Heart Association Strategically Focused Children’s Research Network, and is a Statistical and Methods Reviewer for JAMA Network Open. She is a recipient of the Harvard Medical School Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Partnership Faculty Fellowship.

Dr. Wright’s research aims to improve the supply of and demand for efficient health care that can improve the management of pediatric chronic diseases with a focus on childhood obesity. In her work, she utilizes conjoint analysis, economic evaluation, simulation modeling, health services research, and behavioral economic research methods. Dr. Wright’s work has been funded by NIH, the American Heart Association, and the American Diabetes Association.