Simrun Grewal Davis

Prior to joining the University of Washington, Simi received her Master of Health Science in Health Economics (’13) from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (JHSPH) where she also  worked as a Research Associate in the school’s Department of International Health. Simi's experience includes decision analytic modeling in both private biotechnology industries and public health settings. Her current research interests focus on the use of economic evaluation to inform policies related to the approval, coverage, and uptake of essential medicines. She earned her PhD in Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research & Policy in 2019.

Simi worked on four projects during her two-and-a-half-year research assistantship with the START Center, serving as project manager for each of the projects. Learn more about three of these projects below:

• Integrated Portfolio Management (IPM) Cost of Illness (COI):The IPM COI work encompassed an initial internal Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) survey on data needs around costs of treating illness for diseases addressed in the BMGF Research & Development portfolio, followed by a full data collection process for COI input data and synthesis into data input sheets used in IPM analyses.
• Health Birth, Growth and Development knowledge integration (HBGDki): The START team worked with BMGF’s Healthy Birth, Growth, and Development knowledge integration (HBGDki) team to develop a timeline mapping seminal events in growth and development from conception through adolescence. In the most recent phase of the project, the team worked to digitize the timeline as an interactive map online.
• Country Immunizations Activity Summary, Phase 3: For this two-part project, the START team updated the Country Immunizations code book created during a previous START project to include Expanded Program on Immunization(EPI) documents that the BMGF Vaccine Delivery obtained from country ministries of health. In the second part of the project, the team aimed to provide insight on a series of hypotheses from BMGF on why certain countries experienced better or worse vaccine coverage, using data from the code book.

Simrun is currently a Director of Oncology Business Assessments for the Commercial Strategy & Innovation Department at Pfizer.