Dr. Elyse Olshen Kharbanda is Executive Director of Research and a Senior Research Investigator at HealthPartners Institute. Dr. Kharbanda is a board-certified pediatrician with subspecialty board certification in adolescent medicine. Since joining the Institute in 2010, Dr. Kharbanda has led an impactful portfolio of research, leveraging health system data to promote health care quality for women and children.

Dr. Kharbanda co-leads the HealthPartners Institute Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) team. In collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and several other health systems, the VSD conducts post-licensure safety surveillance for vaccine in use in the United States. Dr. Kharbanda and her HealthPartners-based VSD team have and continue to lead multisite observational studies of vaccines administered during pregnancy, with publications in JAMA and NEJM. Data from these studies has been widely disseminated, including through presentations to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

A second area of focus for Dr. Kharbanda has been the use of point-of-care electronic data capture and clinical decision support (CDS) to improve care for children and adolescents. With funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH), Dr. Kharbanda developed and implemented an electronic health record linked CDS to improve recognition and early management of hypertension in adolescents. This tool has been implemented across the HealthPartners care delivery system and with funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is now being adapted and implemented in Essentia Health. Dr. Kharbanda also helped in the development and validation of the pediatric appendicitis risk calculator (pARC) and has piloted a tool for electronic capture of adolescent risk screening.

Dr. Kharbanda completed her medical degree at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, pediatric residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University and adolescent fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center. She received a Master’s in Public Health from Columbia University and was an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health at Columbia University prior to joining the Institute.

Joined the Institute: 2010

Education and training: MD, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; MPH, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.

Overview/research interests: Vaccine and drug safety in pregnancy, clinical decision support, maternal and child health.

Current research activities and funding:

• Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD)
• Improving recognition and management of hypertension in youth: Comparing approaches for extending effective CDS for use in a large rural health system (PedsBP)
• Adolescent risk behavior screening (eTeenQ)