7 Things Everyone Should Know About Antidepressants
Joshua Petimar, ScD
Assistant Professor
email
[email protected]
assistant
Banapsha Rahman
Primary Divisions and Centers
Research Focus
Research Areas:
Health Policy, Nutrition, Prevention
Featured Project
See more ProjectsJoshua Petimar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. His research seeks to identify policy solutions to promote healthy eating, especially for those at the highest risk of nutrition-related chronic disease. Dr. Petimar leverages retail sales data and electronic health record data to investigate the behavioral and health effects of different nutrition policy strategies, including nutrition labeling, beverage taxes, and changes to nutrition assistance programs such as SNAP and WIC. His work has been funded by the NIH and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Petimar received his joint doctorate degree in Nutrition and Epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Featured Publications
Featured Key Publication
Medication-Induced Weight Change Across Common Antidepressant Treatments : A Target Trial Emulation Study
Led by Joshua Petimar, this study compared weight change across eight common first-line antidepressants for patients taking an antidepressant for the first time. While randomized control trials are considered the most rigorous method for comparing the effects of different medications, they are prohibitively costly and time consuming. In this case, the study team emulated a randomized trial by designing their ideal, hypothetical trial and aligning the data to match that trial as closely as possible.
The team found differences in weight change between the different antidepressants after medication initiation, with bupropion consistently showing the least weight gain. Overall, the study adds rigorous evidence on expected weight gain across common antidepressant treatments
