Research scientist
Kaiser Permanente
Dr. Rulin Hechter is an infectious disease epidemiologist in the Department of Research & Evaluation Southern California Permanente Medical Group and an adjunct assistant professor of Epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is also an Assistant Professor of Health Systems Science in the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the prevention and treatment of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. She also studies the impact of psychiatric disorders and substance abuse on health outcomes and care engagement among patients affected by other chronic comorbidities, including HIV/AIDS.
Her other research interests include vaccine safety and effectiveness, and disparity of and barriers to vaccine uptake. She has considerable experience leading and collaborating on multisite studies and on many large government- and industry-sponsored epidemiologic and intervention studies. She has extensive experience using automated health care data for research.