Salar Khaleghzadegan, MPP

Salar Khaleghzadegan, MPP, is a PhD student at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. Salar is interested in exploring the dynamic nature of patient-provider relationships and the impact of these interactions on the quality, experience, and outcomes of care for patients, with a particular focus on racial and ethnic minority patients. Specifically, he hopes to use computational approaches to study linguistic and paralinguistic aspects of communication during clinical encounters in order to uncover the factors that differentiate high-quality and low-quality patient-provider communication. By exploring these dynamic interactions, he hopes to elucidate mechanisms where factors like cultural dissimilarity and clinician bias during clinical interactions contribute to disparities in care. He hopes that his research not only advances the science of patient-provider communication but also informs strategies we can use to bridge the social gap between patients and providers to improve patient-centered communication and improve quality and equity in patient outcomes.

Before joining TDI, Salar was a Research Data Analyst at the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he explored the role of teamwork and coordination, leadership, and communication for patient safety and quality. Salar received an MPP from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) School of Public Policy. He also holds a BS in Biological Sciences and a minor in Sociology from UMBC.