John Wittenborn
Pronouns: He/Him
John is a senior data scientist and is currently serving as the project director for the national Vision and Eye Health Surveillance System (VEHSS), which was named the 2020 Most Outstanding Project of the Year by the American Public Health Association’s Vision Care Section. VEHSS is a publicly available resource where users can freely and easily access many of the best sources of vision and eye health data. Altogether, VEHSS summarizes more than 200 vision and eye health outcomes from 10 data sources representing over 250 million patient-level records per year.
John has experience in program evaluation and cost-effectiveness analyses, with expertise in simulation modeling. He was lead developer of the Multiple Eye Disease Simulation (MEDS) model, named the 2012 APHA Vision Care Section Outstanding Project of the Year. He previously developed simulation models directly used to inform national policy including birth cohort testing and treatment for viral hepatitis C and vaccination for hepatitis B among persons with diabetes. He has experience in data science, analytics and visualization using SAS, Stata, Python, VB/VBa, C++, and Java.
John is also currently serving as project director for a National Institutes on Aging funded grant “Developing and Evaluating a Surveillance System for Alzheimer’s Dementia in the United States” and a CDC funded grant “Expanding the National Approach to Hearing Loss Education and Awareness” which seeks to produce the first national estimates of hearing loss prevalence.
Recently, John led the analysis of Medicare payments for major eye diseases, and helped estimate the total economic burden of vision loss in the United States, and conducted cost evaluations of hypertension control interventions.
Previously, John was a Research Economist at RTI International where he specialized in cost-effectiveness analyses, chronic disease modeling, and Medicare payment programs including prescription drug reimbursement and competitive bidding.
Quick Links
Education
BS
Virginia Tech
BA
Virginia Tech
Honors & Awards
Most Outstanding Project of the Year (VEHSS) | 2020
American Public Health Association’s Vision Care Section
Project Contributions
Publications
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opens in new tab"County-Level Variation in the Prevalence of Visual Acuity Loss or Blindness in the U.S."
Journal Article | July 22, 2022
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opens in new tab"Trends in Prevalence and Treatment of Diabetic Macular Edema and Vision-Threatening Diabetic Retinopathy Among Medicare Part B Fee-for-Service Beneficiaries."
Journal Article | March 7, 2022
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opens in new tab"The Economic Burden of Vision Loss and Blindness in the United States."
Journal Article | November 1, 2021
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opens in new tab"The Prevalence of Diagnosis of Major Eye Diseases and their Associated Payments in the Medicare Fee-for-Service Program."
Journal Article | November 1, 2021
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opens in new tab"Prevalence of Visual Acuity Loss or Blindness in the US: A Bayesian Meta-analysis."
Journal Article | June 30, 2021
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opens in new tab"Vision Impairment and Blindness Prevalence in the United States: Variability of Vision Health Responses across Multiple National Surveys in the United States."
Journal Article | January 1, 2021
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opens in new tab"Disparities in Receipt of Eye Exams among Medicare Part B Fee-for-Service Beneficiaries with Diabetes — United States, 2017."
Journal Article | November 15, 2019
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opens in new tab"Turning Narrative Descriptions of Individual Behavior into Network Visualization and Analysis: Example of Terrorist Group Dynamics."
Book | August 29, 2018