Dr. Gulzar H. Shah, PhD, MStat, MS currently serves as a Professor and the Department Chair, Health Policy and Community Health at the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health (JPHCOPH), Georgia Southern University. He also served the JPHCOPH as the Associate Dean for Research from July 2014 to June 2017. Dr. Shah’s training is interdisciplinary, with a PhD in Sociology (with focus areas of Sociology of Health and Demography), a master’s degree in social sciences and another master's degree in Statistics. Dr. Shah’s multi-sector work experience spans over 23 years, with appointments in both academia and public health practice agencies, nationally and internationally. Prior to joining JPHCOPH in 2012, he was the Lead Research Scientist at the National Association of County and City Health Departments (NACCHO), and the Director of Research at the National Association of Health Data Organizations (NAHDO) prior to that. He also served at the Utah State Department of Health for six years, contributing significantly to patient safety projects, maternal and child health research, informatics projects (such as IBIS-PH, MatCHIIM), and health services and systems research.
Dr. Shah’s broader research interests include (1) eHealth and public health informatics; (2) data improvement; (3) health equity, social determinants of health, and health disparities; and (4) Public Health Services and Systems Research (PHSSR). Specific PHSSR areas of research interests include (a) accreditation of health departments; (b) PH workforce; (c) public Health finance; (d) evidence-based public health and practice-based research; (e) quality improvement; (d) and Global HIV services. Dr. Shah is a prolific researcher who won Georgia Southern University’s 2016 Award for Excellence in Research. He currently serves as the Associate Editor of BMC Public Health, and as the Consulting Editor (biostatistics) for the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. He is a new addition to the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Public Health (November 07, 2019 through November 09, 2022). Dr. Shah is on 2019 Marquis Who’sWho list in the field of Health; a list reserved “for individuals who possess professional integrity, demonstrate outstanding achievement in their respective fields and have made innumerable contributions to society as a whole.”