Mahshid Abir is a senior physician policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. She is also an emergency physician and director of the Acute Care Research Unit (ACRU) at the University of Michigan. Her research evaluates the continuum of acute care delivery in the United States, including pre-hospital, emergency, inpatient, and ambulatory care, with a focus on addressing policy-related issues pertaining to utilization, quality, efficiency, outcomes, and costs of acute care delivery in these settings.  Abir's past work includes developing measures for hospital and health care coalition surge capacity funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.  She has also evaluated health care system and patient-centered outcomes as part of health care system redesign initiatives. She has expertise in various health services research methods, including mixed quantitative – qualitative methods and community-/stakeholder-based participatory research. Abir received her M.D. from the University of Cincinnati.