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  • Heather Taylor, PhD, MPH, RDH

Heather Taylor, PhD, MPH, RDH

Assistant Professor

Heather Taylor
Phone:
317-274-5246
Email:
hhavens@iu.edu
Departments:
Health Policy and Management
Degrees:
PhD, Health Policy and Management, Indiana University
MPH, Health Policy and Management, Indiana University
BA, Public Health Dental Hygiene, Indiana University School of Dentistry

Resume/CV

Health Sciences Building, RG 6130
1050 Wishard Blvd
Indianapolis, Indiana
46202

Biography

Dr. Heather L. Taylor is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health and an Affiliate Research Scientist at the Regenstrief Institute. She is a health services and health policy researcher whose work sits at the intersection of oral health, mental health, health informatics, and population health policy, with a particular focus on improving oral and mental health care for low-income and underserved populations.

Dr. Taylor began her professional career as a licensed dental hygienist, practicing in both private and community settings and working extensively with underserved populations. These clinical experiences directly inform her research agenda, which is grounded in real-world health system challenges and policy-relevant questions. She earned her MPH and PhD in Health Policy and Management from Indiana University, where she also completed a competitive National Library of Medicine Population and Public Health Informatics Fellowship. Her doctoral dissertation, recognized with Indiana University’s Distinguished PhD Dissertation Award, used advanced econometric methods and large Medicaid claims datasets to examine patterns of dental care use among low-income adults.

Dr. Taylor’s research program leverages health systems data, including electronic health records, medical and dental claims, and administrative datasets, to evaluate access to care, utilization patterns, and downstream health and economic outcomes. Her scholarship challenges widely held assumptions in oral health and mental health policy, including the presumed benefits of preventive dental care on medical spending and the strength of the oral–systemic health link. She has published extensively in leading peer-reviewed journals such as JAMA Health Forum, Health Services Research, American Journal of Managed Care, and the Journal of the American Dental Association, and her work has informed state Medicaid policy reforms and legislative testimony.

Dr. Taylor is the Principal Investigator of a National Institutes of Health K01 Mentored Career Development Award from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, which supports her NIH-funded research to leverage health systems data to reduce oral health disparities. Through this work, she is developing predictive models to identify adults at risk of seeking emergency department care for non-traumatic dental conditions, with the goal of informing upstream, system-level interventions that improve access to appropriate oral health care.

In addition to her research, Dr. Taylor teaches graduate-level courses in U.S. Health Care Systems and Health Policy within the MPH program, delivering instruction in live, hybrid, and online formats. Her teaching emphasizes critical evaluation of health policy, health system organization, payment, and regulation, and prepares future public health leaders to understand and navigate the structural forces shaping access, cost, and quality of care in the U.S. health system.

Video: Bridging the Divide

Heather explores how separating oral health from medical care worsens costs, and how health systems can use existing electronic health record data to identify and support patients at risk for preventable dental emergencies.

Research Interests

  • Heath services research
  • Mental health
  • Oral health disparities
  • Oral-systemic relationship
  • Dental informatics

Courses Taught

  • PBHL-H325: Health Information Technology Management and Policy

Selected Publications

  1. Mazurenko, O., Taylor, H., Menachemi, N. The impact of narrow and tiered networks on costs, access, quality, and patient steering: A systematic review. Med Care Res Rev. Published online November 10, 2021:10775587211055923.
  2. Yeager, V., Taylor, H., Menachemi, N., Haut, D., Halverson, P., Vest, J.R. Primary Care Case Conferences to Mitigate Social Determinants of Health: A Case Study from One FQHC System. Am J Accountable Care. 2021;9(4):12-19.
  3. Bako, A. T., Taylor, H. L., Wiley, K. J., Zheng, J., Walter-McCabe, H. A., Kasthurirathne, S. N., & Vest, J. R. (2021). Using natural language processing to classify social work interventions. The American Journal of Managed Care, 27(1), e24–e31.
  4. Taylor H, Holmes AM, Blackburn J. Prevalence of and factors associated with unmet dental need among the US adult population in 2016. Community Dent Oral Epidemiol. 2020 Dec 4. doi: 10.1111/cdoe.12607
  5. Taylor, H., Apathy, N., & Vest, J. Health information exchange use during dental visits. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2021 Jan 25;2020:1210-1219. PMID: 33936497; PMCID: PMC8075496.
  6. Taylor, H., Rahurkar, S., Treat, T., Thyvalikakath, T. & Schleyer, T. (2020) Does periodontal treatment improve systemic health? A systematic review of reviews. Journal of Dental Research, doi:10.1177/0022034520965958.
  7. Blackburn, J., Bennett, A., Fifolt, M., Rucks, A., Taylor, H., Wolff, P., Sen, P. (2020) “Pediatric dental care utilization and parent/caregiver-rated oral health among Medicaid enrollees in Alabama, 2019.” Journal of American Dental Association 151 (6):416-426. doi.org/10.1016/j.adaj.2020.02.016
  8. Taylor, H., Siddiqui, Z., Frazier K., and Thyvalikakath, T. (2019). “Evaluation of a Dental Diagnostic Terminology Subset.” Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 264 (August): 1602–3. doi.org/10.3233/SHTI190555
  9. Taylor, H., & Yeager, V. A. (2019). Core Competency Gaps among Governmental Public Health Employees With and Without a Formal Public Health Degree. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice: JPHMP. doi.org/10.1097/PHH.000000000000107
  10. Taylor, H., Harle, C., Johnson, S., Menachemi, N. (2019). “Workplace Incivility Experienced by Health Administration Faculty.” The Journal of Health Administration Education 36 (2): 191–216.
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