Maria L. Alva is an Assistant Research Professor at the Massive Data Institute at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. Her work focuses on health service research and preventive health, particularly mental health, quality of life, maternal health, and non-communicable diseases. She also works on impact evaluations of interventions tangential to health, including housing and transportation, and the cost-effectiveness of those investment decisions. Prior to her academic career, Maria worked as a Senior Social Scientist at the Executive Office of the Mayor of DC, a Senior Research Associate at Impaq International, and as a Health Economist in the Public Health and Policy Research Division at RTI International. She earned a DPhil in Public Health and an MPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford. Her work has been published in Health Affairs, Diabetic Medicine, Health Economics Journal, among others.
Maria L. Alva is a 2021 grantee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health Data for Action program, managed by AcademyHealth.