Victor Puac-Polanco, MD, DrPH is a Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School under the mentorship of Dr. Ronald C. Kessler, McNeil Family Professor of Health Care Policy. Building on his previous work on psychiatric epidemiology in Guatemala, Dr. Puac-Polanco plans to comprehend the translational implications of the detection and treatment of behavioral health problems in low- and middle-income countries. Specifically, he will estimate the costs of untreated common mental disorders from a societal perspective, simulate policy implementations to evaluate the likely effects of interventions to address the unmet need for treatment of mental disorders, and evaluate the effects of actual policy implementations in various parts of the world that occur in response to the simulations. Dr. Puac-Polanco received his Medical Degree from Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala in 2009, his Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012, and his Doctor of Public Health from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in 2020.
