In late 2019, the Division of Health Policy and Insurance Research (HPI) opened the call for nominations for the inaugural Aaka Pande and Sumit Majumdar Memorial Award. The award was established in response to the untimely passing of Drs. Pande and Majumdar, as a means of honoring their legacy of dedication to rigorous science for impactful population health benefit. HPI is honored to announce the 2023 winner of the award:

Mahnum Shahzad, PhD, Post-doctoral Research Fellow
Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute
 

The review committee received numerous nominations of outstanding work by current and former DPM fellows. Dr. Shahzad is this year’s awardee, based on her contributions of high-quality research to informing discussions of pressing pharmaceutical policy dilemmas in the United States.

Dr. Shahzad is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Population Medicine dedicated to conducting exceptional research that provides robust evidence to regulators and policy makers as they tackle the joint challenges of effectively regulating and sustainably paying for efficacious pharmaceutical products. Her work thus far has focused on the accelerated drug approval pathway and biosimilar use and is expanding to additional pressing issues in the pharmaceutical space. Dr. Shahzad’s paper, “Association Between Preapproval Confirmatory Trial Initiation and Conversion to Traditional Approval or Withdrawal in the FDA Accelerated Approval Pathway” was published in the January 2023 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

With this award, HPI annually recognizes the talents of current and former research fellows in the Department of Population Medicine making significant contributions to constructive health policy dialogue through exceptional papers, highly regarded blogs, or op-eds. For more information on the award, please visit the award website.