Laura Prichett, MHS, PhD

Dr. Laura Prichett is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of General Pediatrics, at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Medicine, Biomedical Informatics & Data Science. She serves as the Associate Director and Faculty Lead for the Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Data Management (BEAD) Core and is a Core Faculty member of the Center for Suicide Prevention at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Trained as an epidemiologist, demographer, and biostatistician, Dr. Prichett brings expertise in working with complex, nationally representative datasets as well as administrative and electronic health record (EHR) data to advance clinical translational research. Dr. Prichett’s research centers on improving the understanding of suicidal thoughts and behaviors among children and adolescents, with particular attention to patterns and trends by sex, race/ethnicity, and age. She also investigates biological mechanisms that may influence mental health, including infections and disruptions in the microbiome. She works to improve care for young patients with suicide risk by using implementation science and engineering approaches to inform systems-level improvements in the screening and treatment of pediatric patients at risk for suicide in emergency and primary care settings. In addition to her research, Dr. Prichett advises investigators across Johns Hopkins on study design and data analysis involving EHR, administrative, and longitudinal data through her leadership role in the BEAD Core. She is a founding co-investigator of the Pediatric COVID AntiBody Study (PCABS), a longitudinal study examining biomarkers related to mental health among ethnoracially minoritized youth. In 2023, she was awarded a two-year Building Interdisciplinary Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) grant to further her interdisciplinary research efforts.