Oct 27, 2023 | by Alexis Abramson | Dartmouth Engineer
Dean Alexis Abramson speaks with Professor Wesley Marrero on how he is leveraging data to improve lives. Professor Marrero uses data to help practitioners and policymakers make better decisions across a range of health fields: mental health, neonatology, cardiovascular disease, organ transplantation, and substance use disorder. Drawn to Dartmouth in 2021 by what he calls "the culture of translation from research to practice," he shares his approach to collaboration—including managing a growing team and new research areas.
Dean Alexis Abramson (left) talks to Professor Wesley Marrero about how he is leveraging data to improve lives and help clinicians and policymakers make better decisions.
How would you describe your research?
MARRERO: My team and I develop decision-support tools that address challenges associated with the implementation of data, such as inequity—which is a very big thing at Dartmouth Health—the lack of interpretability within the AI world, need for flexibility, and irrational behavior.
Irrational behavior as it pertains to the patient or the healthcare system?
Patients or providers. As human beings, we don't necessarily want to optimize things, we're more than happy just satisfying certain criteria. An example is someone who is terribly afraid of or just hates to take medications. A doctor may recommend three pills. But because I really do not like pills, I take just one. I will probably not have a heart attack, but at the same time, I'm not going to follow the full recommendation.
How is your approach unique?
Everything we do is data driven. My dual expertise in operations engineering and statistics give me a distinctive perspective. I and the members of my team are always working with that interplay to narrow the gap between decision-making theory and practice by creating methods that leverage the increasingly available data across different domains.
"All the work my team and I do is inspired by real-world problems. I'm thrilled about the prospect of impacting people's lives for the better through my work."
—Professor Wesley Marrero
What is an example of an application?
My team and I are interested in the where and when to place and move mobile health units to address two big problems within the area of opioid use disorder: access to treatment and the morbidity and mortality of opioid-related causes. The main challenge is that vulnerable populations are more likely to suffer from opioid use disorder and they're more likely to die from it. But they have much lower access to treatment—and we aim to address that with the allocation of mobile health units.
It sounds as though you work with various partners in the medical field.
I have been able to connect with such bright minds across different domains through collaborations with Dartmouth Health and the Geisel School of Medicine as well as the Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Michigan Medical School and School of Public Health, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs. I have partnered with mental and public health professionals, neonatologists, cardiologists, and hepatologists—relationships that have ensured the acceptance and usability of my work in practice.
So you have to understand how a doctor or a patient is thinking.
There have been two vital skills I have had to develop over time. The first one is just learning how to listen—not just what people are saying, but where they put the emphasis, their intonation, their body language. The second one is simply recognizing when I'm wrong, when I don't know the answer. Something else I have had to develop working in these multidisciplinary teams is identifying people with at least interest in quantitative techniques. They serve as translators among the team.
What drew you to Dartmouth?
The big thing for me was the culture of collaboration, the passion for teaching, and the idea of having a human-centered impact. I love designing mathematical models and developing solution techniques, but all the work my team and I do is inspired by real-world problems. I'm thrilled about the prospect of impacting people's lives for the better through my work.
For contacts and other media information visit our Media Resources page.
